Preview: Mary's "Good Part" and Martha's Due

On Monday, March 28, I'll continue the Son Rise Morning Show series of reflections on Lenten sermons by Saint John Henry Newman edited and excerpted in The Tears of Christ. This week's sermon is "The Good Part of Mary" in which Newman explicates the meaning of the story of Jesus at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus when Martha asks Jesus to get Mary to help her serve the dinner rather than listen to Him. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate. 

Newman juxtaposes this story from the Gospel of St. Luke with what we read about Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (whose shared feast is now celebrated on July 29) in the Gospel of St. John, when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb:

Martha and Mary were the sisters of Lazarus, who was afterwards raised from the dead. All three lived together, but Martha was mistress of the house. St. Luke mentions, in a verse preceding the text, that Christ came to a certain village, "and a certain woman, named Martha, received Him into her house." Being then at the head of a family, she had duties which necessarily engaged her time and thoughts. And on the present occasion she was especially busy, from a wish to do honour to her Lord. "Martha was cumbered about much serving." On the other hand, her sister was free from the necessity of worldly business, by being the younger. "She had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard His word." The same distinction, at once of duty and character, appears in the narrative of Lazarus' death and restoration, as contained in St. John's Gospel. "Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him; but Mary sat still in the house." [John xi. 20.] Afterwards Martha "went her way and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Again, in the beginning of the following chapter, "There they made Him a supper; and Martha served ... Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair." [John xii. 2, 3.] In these passages the same general difference between the sisters presents itself, though in a different respect;—Martha still directs and acts, while Mary is the retired and modest servant of Christ, who, at liberty from worldly duties, loves to sit at His feet and hear His voice, and silently honours Him with her best, without obtruding herself upon His sacred presence.

To return:—"Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to Him, and said, Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her," in the words of the text, "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken from her."

I appreciated how Newman emphasized Martha's essential role in her household with her brother and sister: she is the head of the family in his view, not Lazarus. She is in charge of many details and she even leads her sister to Jesus before he raises Lazarus from the dead. Nevertheless, Newman focuses in this sermon on Mary's not just good, but better part. Thus, he follows the age-old tradition of highlighting the superiority of the contemplative life over the active life.

(Please remember that England, until some of her Catholic exiles had returned from their monasteries and convents during and after the French Revolution, had not benefited from the presence of contemplative religious praying for her people's intentions for a few hundred years. Since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Friaries, and Convents during the reign of Henry VIII, that way of life had been absent from England, Wales, and parts of Ireland too (and Scotland under John Knox's "reformation"). The only official religious vocation in England until the 19th century had been the active ministerial life in the Church of England: deacons, priests, and bishops. Vocations to the contemplative community life--and God surely called some to such a life--were thwarted in England in those intervening years.*)

And I think Newman is a little careful about this point--the fact that Anglican Christians in England have not known this contemplative form of life, haven't seen it modeled in their religious life--when he both acknowledges the superiority of Mary's part, the need for his congregations to follow her example, and yet remembers that they have active duties and responsibilities:

Mary's portion is the better of the two. Our Lord does not expressly say so, but He clearly implies it. If His words be taken literally, they might, indeed, even mean that Martha's heart was not right with Him, which, it is plain from other parts of the history, they do not mean. Therefore, what He intimated surely was, that Martha's portion was full of snares, as being one of worldly labor, but that Mary could not easily go wrong in hers; that we may be busy in a wrong way, we cannot well adore Him except in a right one; that to serve God by prayer and praise continually, when we can do so consistently with other duties, is the pursuit of the one thing needful, and the good part which shall not be taken away.

Newman cites several verses from the letters of St. Paul and St. Peter, and even St. James, in support of the need to pray constantly, including

"Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving." (Col 4:2)

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and as you sing psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God." (Col 3:16) . . .

"[C]ast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you." (1 Peter 5:7) . . .

"Is any one among you suffering? let him pray. Is any cheerful? let him sing praise." (James 5:13)

In passages not included in The Tears of Christ, Newman acknowledges that although he can readily cite the prayers of the Apostles and the Mother of God in the Upper Room between the Ascension and Pentecost as an example of this kind of contemplative prayer life, the early Church, the Apostolic Age, was an era of active ministry, preaching, forming the Christian community, bringing the Jews and the Gentiles to the Way of Jesus. ("Thus Mary's portion was withheld from the Church for many years, while it laboured and suffered.") Once the Church was established, Mary's lot returned:

From that time onwards to the present day, Mary's lot has been offered to vast multitudes of Christians, if they could receive it*. Blessed indeed are they whom Christ calls near to Him to be His own peculiar attendants and familiar friends. Blessed even if they are allowed to seize intervals of such service towards Him; but favoured and honored beyond thought, if they can, without breach of duty, put aside worldly things with full purpose of heart and present themselves as a holy offering, without spot or blemish, to Him who died for them. These are they who "follow the Lamb wherever He goes" (Rev 14:4) and to them He more especially addresses those lessons of faith and resignation which are recorded in His Gospel. [Here Newman cites Luke 12:15-40]

Since most of us listening to EWTN's Son Rise Morning Show on Sacred Heart Radio are living the active Christian life, we are only able to "seize intervals" of time for contemplation and prayer, before the Blessed Sacrament during our hours in Perpetual Adoration chapels, on retreats, during set times of mental prayer and devotion in our homes, at work, at school, etc. Therefore, Saint John Henry Newman's admonition that we seek Mary of Bethany's good part whenever we can, "without breach of duty" applies readily to us.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain); Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1654-56)

Preview: Newman on "Times of Private Prayer"

We know from his works that Saint John Henry Newman, as an Anglican and as a Catholic, was a man of prayer, both liturgical (public) and private. As the French Oratorian, Father Louis Bouyer points out in his introduction to Ignatius Press's volume of Newman's Prayers, Verses, and Devotions, Newman's prayer life may be exemplified by his admiration and translation of Lancelot Andrewes' Preces Privatae from the Greek, which was published as one of the Tracts for the Times. 

Bouyer calls them "spiritual exercises of penance, confession of faith, praise, thanksgiving, and intercession, leading to a fully conscious participation in the eucharistic mysteries and, ultimately, to a whole life in God's presence in Christ." (p. xvii). Newman continued to use these Devotions of the seventeenth century Anglican Bishop throughout his life as a Catholic priest "for his daily preparation and thanksgiving before and after Mass for his most personal meditations." (same page) As Bouyer comments, Newman's prayer was the practice of lectio divina, meditation on Divine Revelation in Scripture and Tradition.

So it's no surprise that he would preach on the need for prayer and devotion in the Christian life, and indeed urge his congregations not only to pray always but to set aside specific times to prayer, as he does in "Times of Private Prayer", which is the meditation for the Saturday of the third week of Lent selected in The Tears of Christ: Meditations for Lent. According to the Newman Reader's chronology of sermons, however, this was an Advent sermon, delivered early in Newman's tenure as a minister in the Church of England in 1829, and preceded by a sermon on "Mental Prayer" and followed by a sermon on "Forms of Mental Prayer".

Nevertheless, on Monday, March 21, we'll continue our discussion of Newman's Lenten sermons/meditations on the Son Rise Morning Show with this sermon. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate. 

What makes it appropriate for a Lenten meditation is the verse Newman uses to introduce the sermon: 

"Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Matt 6:6

which is included in the Gospel for Ash Wednesday when Jesus instructed His disciples on the proper ways to practice fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.

As Newman describes the context of this verse:

The Pharisees were in the practice, when they prayed by themselves, of praying in public, in the corners of the streets. Public private prayer, this was their self-contradictory practice. Warning, then, His disciples against the particular form of hypocrisy in which the self-conceit of human nature at that day showed itself, our Lord promises in the text His Father's blessing on such humble supplications as were really addressed to Him, and not made to gain the praise of men: "when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matt. 6:6). Those who seek the unseen God (He seems to say), seek Him in their hearts and hidden thoughts, not in loud words, as if He were far off from them. Such men would retire from the world into places where no human eye saw them, there to meet Him humbly and in faith, who is "about their path, and about their bed, and spieth out all their ways." And He, the Searcher of hearts, would reward them openly. Prayers uttered in secret, according to God's will, are treasured up in God's Book of Life. They seem, perhaps, to have sought an answer here, and to have failed. Their memory perishes even in the mind of the petitioner, and the world never knew of them. But God is ever mindful, and in the last day, when the books are opened, they shall be disclosed and rewarded before the whole world.

Newman acknowledges that a Christian should always be praying, raising our minds to think of God; but he asks, should we really set times for ourselves, privately, to pray? Doesn't the public worship of God at set times and places suffice for such structured, on-purpose prayer? 

Then he cites passages of scripture that prove that Jesus prayed at certain times, going off by Himself and that other Biblical heroes did the same:

The practice of good men in Scripture gives us an example in confirmation of it. Even our Saviour had His peculiar seasons of communing with God. His thoughts indeed were one continued sacred service offered up to His Father; nevertheless, we read of His going up "into a mountain apart to pray," and again, of His "continuing all night in prayer to God." (Matt. 14:23; Luke 6:12) St. Peter too, as in the narrative of the conversion of Cornelius, the Roman centurion, in the tenth chapter of the Acts, went up upon the house-top to pray about the sixth hour; then God visited him. . . . . The Psalmist says, "Seven times a day do I praise Thee, because of Thy righteous judgments." (Ps. 119:164) [The inspiration for the Liturgy of the Hours] And Daniel's practice is told us on a memorable occasion: "Now when Daniel knew that the writing was signed (the impious decree, forbidding prayer to any but king Darius for thirty days), he went into his house, and his windows being open in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he got down upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously." (Dan. 6:10)

So having established "proof texts" from the Holy Bible to convince those who might think such structured prayer unnecessary, he points out, in passages not included in The Tears of Christ, that neglect of structured private prayer may lead to neglect of Sunday worship and indeed, of the constant raising of our minds and hearts to God throughout the day: Newman always shows that great insight into human habits and psychology. When we say, oh, I can pray anywhere, anytime, he suggests, we'll soon pray nowhere, and at no time. We need to establish habits so we may practice virtue and make it part of our lives. Newman particularly urges his congregation to establish habits of morning and evening prayer:

Be sure, whoever of you is persuaded to disuse his morning and evening prayers, is giving up the armor which is to secure him against the wiles of the Devil.

And he warns them of the distractions that could interfere with this habit:

Beware then of the subtlety of your Enemy, who would willingly rob you of your defence. Do not yield to his bad reasonings. Be on your guard especially, when you get into novel situations or circumstances which interest and delight you, lest they throw you out of your regularity in prayer. Anything new or unexpected is dangerous to you. Going much into mixed society, and seeing many strange persons, taking share in any pleasant amusements, reading interesting books, entering into a new line of life, forming some new acquaintance, the sudden prospect of any worldly advantage, travelling: all these things and such like, innocent as they are in themselves, and capable of a religious use, become means of temptation if we are not on our guard. See that you are not unsettled by them; this is the danger.

We all know the temptation to skip Sunday Mass when on vacation; the scheduling of tours and events may interfere with the times and devotions we've prayed at home.

And he concludes with assurances that these secret prayers, regularly practiced, will have a public effect; although the worldly world won't see, our family and friends will see something different. Our regular prayers and devotions will have an influence:

Do not indulge visions of earthly good, fix your hearts on higher things, let your morning and evening thoughts be points of rest for your mind's eye, and let those thoughts be upon the narrow way, and the blessedness of heaven, and the glory and power of Christ your Saviour. Thus will you be kept from unseemly risings and fallings, and steadied in an equable way. Men in general will know nothing of this. They witness not your private prayers, and they will confuse you with the multitude they fall in with. But your friends and acquaintance will gain a light and a comfort from your example. They will see your good works and be led to trace them to their true secret source, the influences of the Holy Spirit sought and obtained by prayer. Thus they will glorify your heavenly Father, and in imitation of you will seek Him, and He who sees in secret shall at length reward you openly.

That conclusion reminds me of one of Newman's Meditations, composed for the boys of the Oratory School (when Newman was a Catholic priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri) which demonstrates the continuity of prayer and devotion in his life:

Stay with me, and then I shall begin to shine as Thou shinest: so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from Thee. None of it will be mine. No merit to me. It will be Thou who shinest through me upon others. O let me thus praise Thee, in the way which Thou dost love best, by shining on all those around me. Give light to them as well as to me; light them with me, through me. Teach me to show forth Thy praise, Thy truth, Thy will. Make me preach Thee without preaching—not by words, but by my example and by the catching force, the sympathetic influence, of what I do—by my visible resemblance to Thy saints, and the evident fulness of the love which my heart bears to Thee.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

From Insult to Praise: "Hot, Holy Ladies" at Stonyhurst College

From the Jesuits in England:

Jesuit Collections is proud to present an exciting new exhibition that reveals the hidden histories of Britain’s ‘Hot, Holy Ladies’ – the Catholic women who kept their faith alive during the religious turmoil in England and Scotland. The phrase ‘Hot, Holy Ladies’ was first used as a sarcastic insult in 1602, aimed at an impressive and effective group of strong-minded female supporters of the Jesuit Catholic mission. . . .

Related to some of the failed Gunpowder Plotters, Helena defied expectations about the role of women to become a leading figure among those who had to practise their beliefs in secret. In particular, she created several extraordinarily beautiful vestments, to be worn by priests who carried out their ministry in secret. These vestments will be the subject of six short films, released online on 4th April. . . .

The exhibition will also feature high profile relics such as the Mary Queen of Scots’ Thorn. Artistic commissions associated with royal women from the 15th to the 17th centuries including the sumptuous Henry VII Cope, and Elizabeth of York’s Prayer Book will also be on display, alongside a gold, enamelled and pearl crucifix belonging to Thomas More’s wife, Lady Alice, and a series of silver gilt reliquaries commissioned by Anne Vaux, who was instrumental in rescuing the Jesuit missionary, John Gerard, in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.

Helena's father was Robert Wintour, and her uncle was Thomas Wintour, and both were executed for their involvement in the Gunpowder Plot when she was five years old. Robert was hanged, drawn, and quartered on January 30, 1606; Thomas on the next day. The documentary, linked in the website above, is narrated by Jan Graffius of the Stonyhurst Collection. You may also enter your email address to receive updates, including the short films describing her works and their symbols.

Image Credit: White "Alleluia" Chasuble. A white vestment containing symbolic flowers, and birds, as well as 'IHS' on the back, made in the latter part of Helena's life. By Harriet Magill - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51098828

Preview: Newman on Self-Denial on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday, March 14, we'll continue our discussion of Newman's Lenten sermons/meditations on the Son Rise Morning Show. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate. This time, however, we'll be looking that a sermon Newman preached during Advent, on December 22, 1833, "Self-Denial the Test of Religious Earnestness." It is the meditation offered in The Tears of Christ for the Friday of Second Week of Lent.

Newman took as his text "Now it is high time to awake out of sleep." Romans 13:11

The excerpt from this sermon in The Tears of Christ does not include this section, which presents what Newman wants his congregation to think about regarding their own religious state:

Now I do not for an instant suspect, my brethren, that you are in the sound slumber of sin. This is a miserable state, which I should hope was, on the whole, the condition of few men, at least in a place like this. But, allowing this, yet there is great reason for fearing that very many of you are not wide awake: that though your dreams are disturbed, yet dreams they are; and that the view of religion which you think to be a true one, is not that vision of the Truth which you would see were your eyes open, but such a vague, defective, extravagant picture of it as a man sees when he is asleep. At all events, however this may be, it will be useful (please God) if you ask yourselves, one by one, the question, "How do I know I am in the right way? How do I know that I have real faith, and am not in a dream?"

Thus Newman reiterates one of the main themes of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, that many Christians in his day professed to believe without really understanding what they believed: their faith in Jesus and their commitment to His teachings were not real, but merely notional. He was trying to wake them up to reality of the Christian life so that it made a difference in the way they lived.

So in this sermon Newman proposes that one way to know that one has "real faith" not notional faith, merely dreaming about being a disciple of Jesus, is to examine one's conscience, identify one's major faults, and practice self-denial as a means of repentance. He warns, however, that no one can be absolutely certain of their state (Newman had by 1833 moved away from Calvinism and dual predestination): "How then shall we try ourselves? Can any tests be named which will bring certainty to our minds on the subject? No indisputable tests can be given. We cannot know for certain. We must beware of an impatience about knowing what our real state is."

Nevertheless, we need to examine our consciences:

Reflect upon our Saviour's plain declarations, "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." [Mark viii. 34.] "If any man come to Me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after Me, he cannot be My disciple." [Luke xiv. 26, 27.] "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off ... if thy foot offend thee, cut it off ... if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: ... it is better for thee to enter into life maimed ... halt ... with one eye than to be cast into hell." [Mark ix. 43-47.]

From such passages we learn that a rigorous self-denial is a chief duty, nay, that it may be considered the test whether we are Christ's disciples, whether we are living in a mere dream, which we mistake for Christian faith and obedience, or are really and truly awake, alive, living in the day, on our road heavenwards. The early Christians went through self-denials in their very profession of the Gospel; what are our self-denials, now that the profession of the Gospel is not a self-denial? In what sense do we fulfill the words of Christ? have we any distinct notion what is meant by the words "taking up our cross?" in what way are we acting, in which we should not act, supposing the Bible and the Church were unknown to this country, and religion, as existing among us, was merely a fashion of this world? What are we doing, which we have reason to trust is done for Christ's sake who bought us?

Newman emphasizes that this self-denial is a daily duty in obedience to Christ, and then he offers some practical advice to practice the virtue of self-denial everyday. It starts with knowing yourself enough to admit your "besetting infirmities", your worst faults:

Every one who is at all in the habit of examining himself, must be conscious of such within him. Many men have more than one, all of us have some one or other; and in resisting and overcoming such, self-denial has its first employment. One man is indolent and fond of amusement, another man is passionate or ill-tempered, another is vain, another has little control over his tongue; others are weak, and cannot resist the ridicule of thoughtless companions; others are tormented with bad passions, of which they are ashamed, yet are overcome. Now let every one consider what his weak point is; in that is his trial. His trial is not in those things which are easy to him, but in that one thing, in those several things, whatever they are, in which to do his duty is against his nature. Never think yourself safe because you do your duty in ninety-nine points; it is the hundredth which is to be the ground of your self-denial, which must evidence, or rather instance and realize your faith.

Newman proposes a daily sacrifice of our normal desires to help us know that we are not dreaming, but awake:

Make some sacrifice, do some distasteful thing, which you are not actually obliged to do, (so that it be lawful,) to bring home to your mind that in fact you do love your Saviour, that you do hate sin, that you do hate your sinful nature, that you have put aside the present world. Thus you will have an evidence (to a certain point) that you are not using mere words. It is easy to make professions, easy to say fine things in speech or in writing, easy to astonish men with truths which they do not know, and sentiments which rise above human nature. "But thou, O servant of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness." (1 Timothy 6:11) Let not your words run on. Try yourself daily in little deeds, to prove that your faith is more than a deceit.

In the conclusion to this sermon, not included in The Tears of Christ, Newman acknowledges that this is hard to do, and indeed, may be a lifetime's work that requires God's grace:

I am aware all this is a hard doctrine; hard to those even who assent to it, and can describe it most accurately. There are such imperfections, such inconsistencies in the heart and life of even the better sort of men, that continual repentance must ever go hand in hand with our endeavors to obey. Much we need the grace of Christ's blood to wash us from the guilt we daily incur; much need we the aid of His promised Spirit! And surely He will grant all the riches of His mercy to His true servants; but as surely He will vouchsafe to none of us the power to believe in Him, and the blessedness of being one with Him, who are not as earnest in obeying Him as if salvation depended on themselves.

Whether in Advent or in Lent, or in any other liturgical season, Newman's counsel is well taken!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain): Andrea di Bartolo, Way to Calvary, c. 1400. The cluster of halos at the left are the Virgin Mary in front, with the Three Marys.

Schiller's "Maria Stuart" at Newman University

My sister and I went to an adaptation of Friedrich Schiller's romantic play, Maria Stuart (the source for Donizetti's opera) at Newman University Saturday night, March 5th. They used the title Mary, Queen of Scots. The director, Mark Manette, used the translation of Schiller's play by Joseph Melish, which includes this poignant scene of Mary, finally being comforted by a priest before her execution:

MARY. 

Melvil! Oh, yes, I understand you, Melvil! 

Here is no priest, no church, no sacrament; 

But the Redeemer says, "When two or three 

Are in my name assembled, I am with them," 

What consecrates the priest? Say, what ordains him 

To be the Lord's interpreter? a heart 

Devoid of guile, and a reproachless conduct. 

Well, then, though unordained, be you my priest; 

To you will I confide my last confession, 

And take my absolution from your lips. 

MELVIL.

 If then thy heart be with such zeal inflamed, 

I tell thee that for thine especial comfort, 

The Lord may work a miracle. 

Thou say'st Here is no priest, no church, no sacrament— 

Thou err'st—here is a priest—here is a God; 

A God descends to thee in real presence. 

[At these words he uncovers his head, and shows a host in a golden vessel.] 

I am a priest—to hear thy last confession, 

And to announce to thee the peace of God 

Upon thy way to death. I have received 

Upon my head the seven consecrations. 

I bring thee, from his Holiness, this host, 

Which, for thy use, himself has deigned to bless. 

MARY. 

Is then a heavenly happiness prepared 

To cheer me on the very verge of death? 

As an immortal one on golden clouds 

Descends, as once the angel from on high, 

Delivered the apostle from his fetters:— 

He scorns all bars, he scorns the soldier's sword, 

He steps undaunted through the bolted portals, 

And fills the dungeon with his native glory; 

Thus here the messenger of heaven appears 

When every earthly champion had deceived me. 

And you, my servant once, are now the servant 

Of the Most High, and his immortal Word! 

As before me your knees were wont to bend, 

Before you humbled, now I kiss the dust.

And she makes her Confession, not mentioning any involvement in the plots to kidnap, depose, or murder Elizabeth. Father Melvil presses her on this point and she denies have anything to do with such plots, while admitting that she requested aid from Catholic monarchs in Europe to secure her release from her captivity in England. So she ends up the moral victor in the play, regal, resolute, and composed, as she goes to the block.

Elizabeth's last scene, on other hand, depicts her as equivocating and irresolute, accusing others, like William Cecil, Lord Burleigh and Sir William Davison, her Secretary of State, of carrying out her wishes--she'd signed the death warrant--against her wishes. So she ends up left alone on the throne, with Leicester on the way to France (with Mary's heart?), and Shrewsbury, who had counselled mercy to Mary earlier in the play, calling her out for her duplicity and leaving her service:

ELIZABETH. (speaking to Burleigh)

And dared you then to execute the writ 

Thus hastily, nor wait to know my pleasure? 

Just was the sentence—we are free from blame 

Before the world; yet it behooved thee not 

To intercept our natural clemency. 

For this, my lord, I banish you my presence; 

And as this forward will was yours alone 

Bear you alone the curse of the misdeed! 

[To DAVISON.] 

For you, sir; who have traitorously o'erstepped 

The bounds of your commission, and betrayed 

A sacred pledge intrusted to your care, 

A more severe tribunal is prepared: 

Let him be straight conducted to the Tower, 

And capital arraignments filed against him. 

My honest Talbot, you alone have proved, 

'Mongst all my counsellors, an upright man: 

You shall henceforward be my guide—my friend. 

SHREWSBURY. 

Oh! banish not the truest of your friends; 

Nor cast those into prison, who for you 

Have acted; who for you are silent now. 

But suffer me, great queen, to give the seal, 

Which, these twelve years, I've borne unworthily, 

Back to your royal hands, and take my leave. 

ELIZABETH (surprised). 

No, Shrewsbury; you surely would not now 

Desert me? No; not now. 

SHREWSBURY. 

Pardon, I am 

Too old, and this right hand is growing too stiff 

To set the seal upon your later deeds. 

ELIZABETH. 

Will he forsake me, who has saved my life? 

SHREWSBURY. 

'Tis little I have done: I could not save 

Your nobler part. Live—govern happily! 

Your rival's dead! Henceforth you've nothing more 

To fear—henceforth to nothing pay regard.

Those last lines will soon prove false: King Philip of Spain will plan his great Armada against England after the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. England and the weather will defeat his Armada, but Elizabeth still has something left to fear. She still fears dissent--both Catholic and Puritan--among her people; she still regrets that she will leave the throne upon her death with no heir of direct family succession and yet she lived her life without ever marrying and being the mother of her heir! 

Schiller depicts another example of that same kind of equivocation in her method of dealing with great issues: wanting one end while living and acting toward another end: wanting the threat that Mary of Scotland poses removed without accepting the responsibility for causing her removal (signing the warrant while not wanting it carried out); maintaining the security of her rule alone while preventing a smooth transition of the throne by never naming her successor or marrying to "produce" an heir of her own. 

Both Elizabeth and Mary rely upon plots and subterfuge to obtain their ends and both are aghast at what those plots require of them. Mary recoils from Mortimer's zeal when she discovers its source is his lust for her; Elizabeth recoils from sentencing Mary to death because she realizes the danger it poses to the idea of monarchy, undercutting her own claim to rule. 

But at the end of Schiller's play, Mary is at peace while Elizabeth is left frustrated and alone: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." (Henry IV, Part Two, Act 3; Scene 1). Mary may have lost her head, but she, the Catholic queen of Scotland, is Schiller's heroine, while Elizabeth, the Protestant queen of England, is his villain.

By the way: here's a 2009 review of a New York production of Schiller's Maria Stuarda from First Things. David P. Goldman reflects on how sympathetically the anti-Catholic Schiller portrays both Mortimer's conversion to Catholicism on the Continent and Mary's reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Communion. He offers excellent background on Schiller and his historical views.

Image Source (End of Act 5, Scene VII): Melvil giving Mary Holy Communion ("This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org")

Image Source (Public Domain): Portrait of Elizabeth I from 1586 to 1587, by Nicholas Hilliard.

Preview: "Surrender to God" on the Son Rise Morning Show

I suppose it has struck many persons as very remarkable, that in the latter times the strictness and severity in religion of former ages has been so much relaxed. There has been a gradual abandonment of painful duties which were formerly enforced upon all. Time was when all persons, to speak generally, abstained from flesh through the whole of Lent. There have been dispensations on this point again and again, [and this very year there is a fresh one]. What is the meaning of this? What are we to gather from it? This is a question worth considering. Various answers may be given, but I shall confine myself to one of them.

I answer that fasting is only one branch of a large and momentous duty, the subduing of ourselves to Christ. We must surrender to Him all we have, all we are. We must keep nothing back. We must present to Him as captive prisoners with whom He may do what He will, our soul and body, our reason, our judgement, our affections, our imagination, our tastes, our appetite. The great thing is to subdue ourselves; but as to the particular form in which the great precept of self-conquest and self-surrender is to be expressed, that depends on the person himself, and on the time or place. What is good for one age or person, is not good for another.

Reading these first paragraphs of this sermon, "Surrender to God", convinced me to select it for our Monday, March 7 discussion of Newman's Lenten sermons/meditations on the Son Rise Morning Show. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

This was one of the first sermons the newly-ordained Father John Henry Newman, Oratorian preached upon his return in England on the First Sunday of Lent, March 12, 1848. 

It is true that the Roman (Western) Catholic Church had much stricter laws for fasting and abstinence in the pre-1983 versions of the Canon Law. It is also true that the traditional Lenten fast was already less strict in Newman's time, although I was not able to find out what dispensation had been issued for the Lent of 1848 (bracketed text above in the original, deleted from The Tears of Christ version). This website offers details of the traditional fast:

• Fasting applies for those age 18 or older (but not obligatory for those 60 years of age or older)
• Ash Wednesday and Good Friday: If possible, no solid food. Only black coffee, tea, or water.
• Mondays through Saturdays: Only one meal preferably after sunset or at least until not before 3 PM. A morning frustulum and evening collation (i.e. the two "snacks") are permitted but not required. No meat or animal products are allowed for anyone, regardless of age - that included even fish in the Early Church.
• Sundays: No meat or animal products allowed. Abstinence remained on Sundays even when fasting did not.
• Holy Week (except Good Friday which is covered above): Only Bread, Salt, and Herbs are permitted for the main meal. Frustulum and collation permitted (of bread, herbs, and salt) but omitted if possible.
• Holy Saturday: No food until Noon. Abstinence including from all animal products continues until Easter begins.

Frustulum is "The small portion of food, a few ounces, formerly permitted at breakfast on fast days. This was provided by canon law (Canon 1251), which permitted taking some food, morning and evening, in addition to the one full meal per day." I don't think that frustulum and evening collation combined were equal to the one meal allowed on fasting days in the current law.

It's also certain that Eastern Rite Catholics have a much stricter fast during Great Lent. No meat, no meat products, no dairy, less olive oil, and no wine.

Newman acknowledges the lessening of the rules for fasting, but then provides an explanation. Fasting and abstinence are not the goals of Lent: surrender to God is the goal of Lent, and indeed, for Newman throughout the Parochial and Plain Sermons he preached as an Anglican and the Catholic sermons thereafter, of the Christian life. We must follow Jesus as His disciples in reality, not as a concept. If we discern that our love of God is notional, we have to cooperate with the grace God gives us through the Church and the Sacraments to make it real. As one his Anglican sermons says, "Love [is] the One Thing Needful" in our spiritual lives.

So Newman reminded his congregation that Sunday at Saint Chad's in Birmingham:

It follows that you must not suppose that nothing is incumbent on us in the way of mortification, though you have not to fast so strictly as formerly. It is reasonable to think that some other duty of the same general kind, may take its place; and therefore the permission granted us in eating may be a suggestion to us to be more severe with ourselves on the other hand in certain other respects. . . .

Certainly we never want to offend God in a Mortal Sin, but Newman suggests that there are many other ways that we fail to love Our Lord:

But there are a great many things wrong which are not so obviously wrong. They are wrong as leading to what is wrong or the consequence of what is wrong, or they are wrong because they are the very same thing as what is forbidden, but dressed up and looking differently. The human mind is very deceitful; when a thing is forbidden, a man does not like directly to do it, but he goes to work if he can to get at the forbidden end in some way. It is like a man who has to make for some place. First he attempts to go straight to it, but finds the way blocked up; then he goes round about it. At first you would not think he is going in the right direction; he sets off perhaps at a right angle, but he just makes one little bend, then another, till at length he gets to his point. Or still more it is like a sailing vessel at sea with the wind contrary, but tacking first this way, and then that, the mariners contrive at length to get to their destination. This then is a subtle sin, when it at first seems not to be a sin, but comes round to the same point as an open direct sin.

Then he suggests that in the nineteenth century this kind of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are good people is even easier, that we're not really committing any sins: 

For this simple reason, because it is more fertile in excuses and evasions. It can defend error, and hence can blind the eyes of those who have not very careful consciences. It can make error plausible, it can make vice look like virtue. It dignifies sin by fine names; it calls avarice proper care of one's family, or industry, it calls pride independence, it calls ambition greatness of mind; resentment it calls proper spirit and sense of honour, and so on.

In another Anglican sermon, Newman called this the "Religion of the Day".

Just think how much easier it is in our age when many things that society previously acknowledged to be sinful are now considered part of our right to pursue our own versions of happiness.

Newman advises his congregation to adopt two particular methods of discipline to subdue our minds to love God more and surrender ourselves to Him: 1. curb our idle (idol?) curiosity and 2. consult the will of others before our own.

Speaking of curbing our curiosity (not our search for the knowledge of God and His Creation, which of course Newman treasured and sought as student and educator), he notes:

The desire of knowledge is in itself praiseworthy, but it may be excessive, it may take us from higher things, it may take up too much of our time—it is a vanity. "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is affliction of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (Eccles 12:12-13) Knowledge is very well in its place, but it is like flowers without fruit. We cannot feed on knowledge, we cannot thrive on knowledge. Just as the leaves of the grove are very beautiful but would make a bad meal, so we shall ever be hungry and never be satisfied if we think to take knowledge for our food. Knowledge is no food. Religion is our only food. Here then is another mortification. Mortify your desire of knowledge. Do not go into excess in seeking after truths which are not religious. . . .

Bring your proud intellect into subjection. Believe what you cannot see, what you cannot understand, what you cannot explain, what you cannot prove, when God says it.

I have the perfect example of failing to curb my idle/idol curiosity to share during this interview and it involves searching on the internet one day after Matt and Anna discussed the Chinese satellite hitting the far side of the moon.

Regarding our desire to follow our own way, Newman advises:

We all like our own will—let us consult the will of others. Numbers of persons are obliged to do this. Servants are obliged to do the will of their masters, workmen of their employers, children of their parents, husbands of their wives. Well, in these cases let your will go with that of those who have a right to command you. Don't rebel against it. Sanctify what is after all a necessary act. Make it in a certain sense your own, sanctify it, and get merit from it. And again when you are your own master, be on your guard against going too much by your own opinion. Take some wise counselor or director, and obey him.

Now, there's a Lenten challenge!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: "Fasting a Source of Trial" on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday, February 28, we'll continue our discussions of seasonal sermons of Saint John Henry Newman, now moving into the Season of Lent, which starts on Ash Wednesday, March 2, on the Son Rise Morning Show. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

Since Pope Francis has urged us to fast and pray for peace in Ukraine (for Russia to cease waging war against the people and government of Ukraine), it seems appropriate to focus on fasting with one of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons, "Fasting a Source of Trial", which Newman preached on the First Sunday of Lent, March 4, 1838.

The gist of the sermon is: 

• Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert after His Baptism by John in the Jordan; 
• we imitate Him when we observe Lent for 40 days; 
• fasting is hard; 
• we may face some temptations when we fast but that doesn't mean we shouldn't fast;
• we can only fast through God's grace; we cannot rely solely on our will and human effort
• the example of Jesus and God's promises to protect us from sin and death should comfort us.

"And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered." Matt. 4:2.

Distinguishing between Our Lord's Fast in the Desert and our Lenten penitence, which includes fasting, Newman begins the sermon, emphasizing that Love must inspire our fasting and penitence:

THE season of humiliation which precedes Easter lasts for forty days in memory of our Lord's long fast in the wilderness. . . . We fast by way of penitence, and in order to subdue the flesh. Our Saviour had no need of fasting for either purpose. His fasting was unlike ours, as in its intensity, so in its object. And yet when we begin to fast, His pattern is set before us; and we continue the time of fasting till in number of days we have equaled His.

There is a reason for this: we must do nothing except with Him in our eye. As He it is, through whom alone we have the power to do any good thing, so unless we do it for Him it is not good. From Him our obedience comes, towards Him it must look. He says, "Without Me ye can do nothing." [John 15:5.] No work is good without grace and without love. . . .

Even in our penitential exercises, Christ has gone before us to sanctify them to us. He has blessed fasting as a means of grace, in that He has fasted; and fasting is only acceptable when it is done for His sake. Penitence is mere formality, or mere remorse, unless done in love. If we fast without uniting ourselves in heart to Christ, imitating Him, and praying that He would make our fasting His own, would associate it with His own, and communicate to it the virtue of His own . . . [then] we beat the air and humble ourselves in vain.

Newman acknowledges that fasting is harder for some than it is for others and does not always or immediately produce the effect we want it to in our spiritual lives:

And this is singularly the case with Christians now, who endeavour to imitate Him; and it is well they should know it, for else they will be discouraged when they practice abstinences. It is commonly said, that fasting is intended to make us better Christians, to sober us, and to bring us more entirely at Christ's feet in faith and humility. This is true, viewing matters on the whole. On the whole, and at last, this effect will be produced, but it is not at all certain that it will follow at once. On the contrary, such mortifications have at the time very various effects on different persons, and are to be observed, not from their visible benefits, but from faith in the Word of God. Some men, indeed, are subdued by fasting and brought at once nearer to God; but others find it, however slight, scarcely more than an occasion of temptation. For instance, it is sometimes even made an objection to fasting, as if it were a reason for not practising it, that it makes a man irritable and ill-tempered. I confess it often may do this.

Fasting and abstinence can make it hard to pray and can even be a source of temptation to sin. Newman explores the mystery of this trial/temptation, citing the desert fathers and perhaps alluding to Saint Anthony the Great:

It is undeniably a means of temptation, and I say so, lest persons should be surprised, and despond when they find it so. And the merciful Lord knows that so it is from experience; and that He has experienced and thus knows it, as Scripture records, is to us a thought full of comfort. I do not mean to say, God forbid, that aught of sinful infirmity sullied His immaculate soul; but it is plain from the sacred history, that in His case, as in ours, fasting opened the way to temptation. And, perhaps, this is the truest view of such exercises, that in some wonderful unknown way they open the next world for good and evil upon us, and are an introduction to somewhat of an extraordinary conflict with the powers of evil. Stories are afloat of hermits in deserts being assaulted by Satan in strange ways, yet resisting the evil one, and chasing him away, after our Lord's pattern, and in His strength; and, I suppose, if we knew the secret history of men's minds in any age, we should find a remarkable union in the case of those who by God's grace have made advances in holy things, a union on the one hand of temptations offered to the mind, and on the other, of the mind's not being affected by them, not consenting to them, even in momentary acts of the will, but simply hating them, and receiving no harm from them. So far persons are evidently brought into fellowship and conformity with Christ's temptation, who was tempted, yet without sin.

[Saint Anthony, as described by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (Newman's great hero) once endured a tremendously violent temptation by a host of demons. After he had fought them off, God came to his aid. Anthony asked Him where He'd been during the temptation and God told him He was with Anthony all the time, sustaining him!]

So Newman concludes from those examples that when we fast, we must rely on Jesus and take comfort in thoughts of His fast and temptation in the desert:

Let it not then distress Christians, even if they find themselves exposed to thoughts from which they turn with abhorrence and terror. Rather let such a trial bring before their thoughts, with something of vividness and distinctness, the condescension of the Son of God. For if it be a trial to us creatures and sinners to have thoughts alien from our hearts presented to us, what must have been the suffering to the Eternal Word, God of God, and Light of Light, Holy and True, to have been so subjected to Satan, that he could inflict every misery on Him short of sinning? . . . 

[One has gone] before us more awful in His trial, more glorious in His victory. He was tempted in all points "like as we are, yet without sin." (Hebrews 4:15) Surely here too, Christ's temptation speaks comfort and encouragement to us.

Newman cites Psalm 91: "He shall give His Angels charge over Thee, to keep Thee in all Thy ways" and "A thousand shall fall beside Thee, and ten thousand at Thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh Thee" as reminders that "we have nothing to fear while we remain within the shadow of the throne of the Almighty."

Then he offers this final encouragement:

Therefore let us be, my brethren, "not ignorant of their devices (2 Cor 2:11);" and as knowing them, let us watch, fast, and pray, let us keep close under the wings of the Almighty, that He may be our shield and buckler. Let us pray Him to make known to us His will,—to teach us our faults,—to take from us whatever may offend Him,—and to lead us in the way everlasting. And during this sacred season, let us look upon ourselves as on the Mount with Him—within the veil—hid with Him—not out of Him, or apart from Him, in whose presence alone is life, but with and in Him—learning of His Law with Moses, of His attributes with Elijah, of His counsels with Daniel—learning to repent, learning to confess and to amend—learning His love and His fear—unlearning ourselves, and growing up unto Him who is our Head.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Saint Anthony of the Desert, pray for us!

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, pray for us!

Image Credit (public domain): Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoy, 1872.
Image Credit (public domain): The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1487–88, by the young Michelangelo, copying Martin Schongauer's engraving

My "Newman Week"

Last week was really a Newman week for me--but one event had to be postponed because of icy and snowy weather. It seems like our weeks here in Wichita have a certain pattern: mild weekends, lovely Mondays and Tuesdays, and then stormy weather coming Wednesday overnight into Thursday. Cancellations and school closings Thursday, warm up Friday, and then warmer weekends! At least, it's happened three times so far this year.

I'd been preparing for two presentations last week at Newman University during their Heritage Month which honors both Saint Maria de Mattias, the founder of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ and Saint John Henry Newman, the university's patron since 1993 (first as Kansas Newman College and then as Newman University). Both saints were born in February (she on February 4, 1805; he on February 21, 1801.) I gave one of the presentations Wednesday, February 16 at Noon (see flyer above) but was warned that the second presentation I was scheduled to make, at the Beata Banquet for benefactors Thursday evening, might need to be postponed if the winter storm occurred as forecast. And it was! I certainly hope it will be rescheduled after spending so much time preparing for it!

I'd also been preparing for our monthly Lovers of Newman meeting at the convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Colwich, Kansas, which I attended Sunday, February 20. We celebrated Saint John Henry Newman's birthday with a red velvet cake (appropriate for a Cardinal!) as we read and discussed one of his Parochial and Plain Sermons, "Love the One Thing Needful".

And of course, I'd been reading and preparing for my segment on the Son Rise Morning Show yesterday (Monday) morning, discussing the third of Newman's pre-Lenten sermons, "Prejudice and Faith", which will be repeated Friday morning February 25, during the first EWTN hour (from 5:00 to 6:00 a.m. Central or 6:00 to 7:00 a.m. Eastern). We'll continue that series throughout Lent, using the sermons included in The Tears of Christ: Meditations for Lent edited and complied by Christopher O. Blum of the Augustine Institute. We'll select one sermon, excerpted by Blum, each week from among the daily meditations and discuss it on Monday mornings at my usual time.

And finally, following a pattern of preparation I developed in college, I read Michael Ffinch's Newman: Towards the Second Spring before my presentations just as a review of Newman's life and times. I commented on that book last week too.

And today I plan to attend the High Tea at Newman University this afternoon. This event has been held to honor the Englishman Saint John Henry Newman since the mid-1980's as this 2019 story explains!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Cardinal Acton, Named In Pectore

On February 18, 1839, Pope Gregory XVI named Charles Januaris Acton (John Dalton-Acton, Baron Acton's uncle) a Cardinal In Pectore (in the heart) at the very young age of 36 (35.9 months exactly). When he was 38.8 years of age, he was publicly named the Cardinal-Priest or Santa Maria della Pace during the January 24, 1842 consistory of the same pope.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he was:

born at Naples, 6 March, 1803; died at Naples, 23 June, 1847. He was the second son of Sir John Francis Acton, Bart. The family, a cadet branch of the Actons of Aldenham Hall, near Bridgnorth, in Shropshire, had settled in Naples some time before his birth. His father was engaged in the Neapolitan trade when he succeeded to the family estate and title through the death of his cousin, Sir Richard Acton, Bart. The Cardinal's education was English, as he and his elder brother were sent to England on their father's death in 1811, to a school near London kept by the Abbé Quéqué. They were then sent to Westminster School, with the understanding that their religion was not to be interfered with. Yet, they not only were sent to this Protestant school, but they had a Protestant clergyman as tutor. In 1819 they went to Magdalen College, Cambridge, where they finished their education. After this strange schooling for a future cardinal, Charles went to Rome when he was twenty and entered the Academia Ecclesiastica, where ecclesiastics intending to be candidates for public offices receive a special training. An essay of his attracted the attention of the Secretary of State, della Somaglia, and Leo XII made him a chamberlain and attaché to the Paris Nunciature, where he had the best opportunity to become acquainted with diplomacy. Pius VIII recalled him and named him vice-legate, granting him choice of any of the four legations over which cardinals presided. He chose Bologna, as affording most opportunity for improvement. He left there at the close of Pius VIII's brief pontificate, and went to England, in 1829, to marry his sister to Sir Richard Throckmorton. Gregory XVI made him assistant judge in the Civil Court of Rome. In 1837 he was made Auditor to the Apostolic Chamber, the highest Roman dignity after the cardinalate. Probably this was the first time it was even offered to a foreigner. Acton declined it, but was commanded to retain it. He was proclaimed Cardinal-Priest, with the title of Santa Maria della Pace, in 1842; having been created nearly three years previously. His strength, never very great, began to decline, and a severe attack of ague made him seek rest and recuperation, first at Palermo and then at Naples. But without avail, for he died in the latter city. His sterling worth was little known through his modesty and humility. In his youth his musical talent and genial wit supplied much innocent gaiety, but the pressure of serious responsibilities and the adoption of a spiritual life somewhat subdued its exercise.

His judgment and legal ability were such that advocates of the first rank said that could they know his view of a case they could tell how it would be decided. When he communicated anything in writing, Pope Gregory used to say he never had occasion to read it more than once. He was selected as interpreter in the interview which the Pope had with the Czar of Russia. The Cardinal never said anything about this except that when he had interpreted the Pope's first sentence the Czar said: "It will be agreeable to me, if your Eminence will act as my interpreter, also." After the conference Cardinal Acton, by request of the Pope, wrote out a minute account of it; but he never permitted it to be seen. The King of Naples urged him earnestly to become Archbishop of Naples, but he inexorably refused. His charities were unbounded. He once wrote from Naples that he actually tasted the distress which he sought to solace. He may be said to have departed this life in all the wealth of a willing poverty.

The Encyclopedia Britannica article on his father, linked above, has this comment about Cardinal Acton and English Catholics:

Cardinal Acton was protector of the English College at Rome, and had been mainly instrumental in the increase, in 1840, of the English vicariates-general to eight, which paved the way for the restoration of the hierarchy by Pius IX. in 1850. . . .

The recent converts John Henry Newman and Ambrose St. John met with Cardinal Acton when they studied for the priesthood at the College of Propaganda from September of 1846 to May of 1847 (they were ordained to the priesthood on May 30, 1847), less than a month before Acton died on June 23 that year. Their contacts with the Cardinal are mentioned twice in Michael Ffinch's 1992 biography, Newman: Towards the Second Spring, published by Ignatius, which I read earlier this week, after purchasing a used copy at Eighth Day Books.

This biography covers Newman's early years, his leadership of the Tractarians/the Oxford Movement, the controversies over Tract 90 and his gradual retirement from Oxford to Littlemore, leading up to his conversion in 1845. Then Ffinch surveys Newman's study for the priesthood in Rome, his decision to become an Oratorian, and his establishment of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Birmingham. The Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850 and Newman's preaching of the Second Spring sermon on July 13, 1852 at the first Synod held since the Restoration of the Hierarchy brings this biography to a close, with a chronological table of dates for the rest of Newman's long life.

Ffinch covers the Tractarian period of Newman's life very well, but I particularly appreciated how he detailed the founding of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England, highlighting the difficulties the inclusion of Faber's Wilfridians caused from the start because of different arrangements and commitments made without Newman's knowledge. Pope Pius IX had approved the foundation of the Oratory in Birmingham under Newman, but Bishop Wiseman wanted one in London and Faber's benefactor, the Earl of Shrewsbury, wanted the Oratory to serve a rural community--not the charism of the Oratory at all. Newman had to work with Wiseman, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Faber to establish the Oratory in Birmingham, and its second house in London. The two would soon be independent of each other because of differences between Faber and Newman in their visions of what the Oratory should be and do.

Ffinch neglects, however, I think to highlight Newman's concern for the Catholic laity; he mentions that Newman gave some talks in 1851 at the Birmingham Oratory on Catholics in England at that time, but he does not name them in the text, as these were the lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England; nor does he highlight the purpose of the talks, to prepare the Little Brothers of the Oratory in Birmingham to defend what they believed in a hostile environment. This seemed a strange omission to me since the book's supposed terminus is Newman's Second Spring sermon in which he celebrates the renewal of Catholic life in England. Ffinch concludes the book, skipping over a few decades, with some later remarks by Cardinal Newman in 1880 about Catholics in England 30 years after the Restoration of the Hierarchy, the reason for that great 1852 sermon. His goals for the laity seem an essential part of that narrative that Ffinch omits from consideration.

Nevertheless, this a good introduction to Newman's life, up to the events of 1852. I'd recommend the book, provisionally, within its limitations.

Image Credit: Public Domain (painter not identified)

Newman and Quinquagesima Sunday on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday, February 21--which just happens to be the 221st anniversary of Saint John Henry Newman's birth in the City of London--Matt Swaim and I will discuss the third of Newman's pre-Lenten sermons on the Son Rise Morning Show. We'll be on the air at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern time. Please listen live on EWTN Radio or on your local EWTN affiliate.

Newman preached on "Prejudice and Faith" on Quinquagesima Sunday, March 5, 1848, reflecting on the Gospel of Saint Luke, chapter 18, verses 31-43, in which Jesus announces His fate. Newman focuses on that third prophecy of His Passion and the Apostles' (His Twelve closest followers) confusion:

And taking the twelve, he said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon; they will scourge him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise.” But they understood none of these things; this saying was hid from them, and they did not grasp what was said. (Luke 18: 31-34)

Exploring the Apostles' lack of understanding, Newman begins his sermon with other examples of their failures:

We have in the Gospel for this day what, I suppose, has raised the wonder of most readers of the New Testament. I mean the slowness of the disciples to take in the notion that our Lord was to suffer on the Cross. It can only be accounted for by the circumstance that a contrary opinion had strong possession of their minds—what we call a strong prejudice against the truth, in their cases an honest religious prejudice, the prejudice of honest religious minds, but still a deep and violent prejudice. When our Lord first declared it, St. Peter said, "Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not happen to Thee." He spoke so strongly that the holy Evangelist says that he "took our Lord and began to rebuke Him." [Matthew 21:22-23] He did it out of reverence and love, as the occasion of it shows, but still that he spoke with warmth, with vehemence, is evident from the expression. Think then how deep his prejudice must have been.

This same prejudice accounts for what we find in today's gospel. . . . Could words be plainer? Yet what effect had they on the disciples? "They understood none of these things, and this was hid from them, and they understood not the things that were said." Why hid? Because they had not eyes to see.

And so again after the resurrection, when they found the sepulchre empty, it is said, "They knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead." [John 20:9] And when St. Mary Magdalen and the other women told them, "their words seemed to them as an idle tale, and they did not believe them" [Luke 24:10-11]; and accordingly when our Lord appeared to them, "He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen Him after He was risen again." [Mark 16:14]

This is certainly a very remarkable state of mind, and the record of it in the gospels may serve to explain much which goes on among us, and to put us on our guard against ourselves, and to suggest to us the question, Are we in any respect in the same state of imperfection as these holy, but at that time prejudiced, disciples of our Lord and Saviour?

Before he addresses the issue of his hearers' imperfection, Newman identifies the source of the Apostles' prejudice, their expectation of the Messiah's mission:

It was the opinion of numbers at that day that the promised Messiah or Christ, who was coming, would be a great temporal Prince, like Solomon, only greater; that he was to have an earthly court, earthly wealth, earthly palaces, lands and armies and servants and the glory of a temporal kingdom. This was their idea—they looked for a deliverer, but thought he would come like Gideon, David, or Judas Maccabaeus, with sword and spear and loud trumpet, inflicting wounds and shedding blood, and throwing his captives into dungeons.

And they fancied Scripture taught this doctrine. They took parts of Scripture which pleased their fancy, in the first place, and utterly put out of their minds such as went contrary to these.

And, putting off again his congregation's examination of conscience, Newman speaks about how some people ignore certain verses in the Holy Bible (and there we see how Newman echoes St. Joan of Arc, quoted in paragraph 795 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter."):

Far be it from me to be severe with such, but is it not so, that in this educated and intelligent and great people, there are multitudes,—nay more, the great majority is such, as to have put a false sense on Scripture, and to be violently opposed to the truth on account of this false interpretation? The Church of Christ walks the earth now, as Christ did in the days of His flesh, and as our Lord fulfilled the Scriptures in what was and what He did then, so the Church fulfils the Scriptures in what she is and what she does now; as Christ was promised, predicted, in the Scriptures as He was then, so is the Church promised, predicted, in the Scriptures in what she is now. Yet the people of this day, though they read the Scriptures and think they understand them, like the Jews then, who read the Scriptures and thought they understood them, do not understand them. Why? Because like the Jews then, they have been taught badly; they have received false traditions, as the Jews had received the traditions of the Pharisees, and are blind when they think they see, and are prejudiced against the truth, and shocked and offended when they are told it.

And, as the Jews then passed over passages in Scripture, which ought to have set them right, so do Christians now pass over passages, which would, if dwelt on, extricate them from their error.

When I read this sermon and came to this point, I thought this is a perfect sermon to discuss with Matt Swaim, who in addition to being the co-host of the Son Rise Morning Show, works at the Coming Home Network as Outreach Manager. Marcus Grodi, the President and Founder, used to host a radio program/podcast called "Verses I Never Saw" and that issue still comes up when converts tell their stories--how they started reading certain verses in the Bible differently on their journey home to the Catholic Church.

Newman cites a few of those verses and then starts to comment on what Catholics should do when faced with this situation of how some misread the Holy Bible. In other words, he instructs his congregation on a method of evangelization:

. . . how are we Catholics to behave ourselves to such prejudiced and erring persons? We should imitate our Lord and Master. He was most patient with them; He abounded in long-suffering. "A bruised reed did He not break, and smoking flax did He not quench." He did not argue, but He quietly led them on. He displayed His wonders to them. He gradually influenced them by His words and by His grace, and then enlightened them, till they believed all things. Till that Apostle [Thomas], who doubted most stoutly of His resurrection, cried out, overcome, "My Lord and My God." So must we do now—so does the Church do now. Argument is well in its place, but it is not the chief thing. The chief thing is to win the mind, to melt the heart, to influence the will. This the Church does. After the pattern of her Divine Lord she draws us with cords of a man, with cords of love, with divine charity; "she hopeth all things, endureth all things," she opens the gates of her temple, she lights up her altars, she displays the Most Holy under the sacramental veil, she bursts forth into singing, till the wayward soul, overcome and subdued, says with the Patriarch, "It is enough—let me now die, for I have seen Thy Face; Nunc Dimittis, Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. I have heard of Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee." And, as our Lord after His resurrection opened the understanding of the disciples to understand the Scripture, so now are the hearts of men softened and enlightened, and they see that the Church fulfils all the prophecies about herself, all that is written in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms; and thus they fall down and worship, and confess that God is here of a truth.

Finally, Newman concludes with some counsel for our own spiritual lives and progress, before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday:

Be sure, my Brethren, that this must be our way too. Never does God give faith, but He tries it, and none without faith can enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore all ye who come to serve God, all ye who wish to save your souls, begin with making up your minds that you cannot do so, without a generous faith, a generous self-surrender; without putting yourselves into God's hands, making no bargain with Him, not stipulating conditions, but saying "O Lord here I am—I will be whatever Thou wilt ask me—I will go whithersoever Thou sendest me—I will bear whatever Thou puttest upon me. Not in my own might or my own strength. My strength is very weakness—if I trust in myself more or less, I shall fail—but I trust in Thee—I trust and I know that Thou wilt aid me to do, what Thou callest on me to do—I trust and I know that Thou wilt never leave me nor forsake me. Never wilt Thou bring me into any trial, which Thou wilt not bring me through. Never will there be a failing on Thy part, never will there be a lack of grace. I shall have all and abound. I shall be tried: my reason will be tried, for I shall have to believe; my affections will be tried, for I shall have to obey Thee instead of pleasing myself; my flesh will be tried, for I shall have to bring it into subjection. But Thou art more to me than all other things put together. Thou canst make up to me all Thou takest from me and Thou wilt, for Thou wilt give to me Thyself. Thou wilt guide me."

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!