The beatification of Cardinal John Newman is of particular significance for the Church. The following is the LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER JOHN PAUL II ON THE OCCASION OF THE 2nd CENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH WHICH WAS ADDRESSED To The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, WHO WAS Archbishop of Birmingham AT THE TIME.
Pope Benedict’s apostolic journey to the United Kingdom culminates on September 19 with the beatification of Venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman, described by Venerable John Paul II as “one of the most distinguished and versatile champions of English spirituality” and as a thinker who came to “a remarkable synthesis of faith and reason.”Hailed by James Joyce as “the greatest of English prose writers,” Newman was at once a seminal theologian (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent), a poet (“The Pillar of the Cloud,” “Dream of Gerontius”), the leading defender of liberal education in his day (Idea of a University), the author of a classic spiritual autobiography (Apologia Pro Vita Sua), and a preacher with an eloquence perhaps unsurpassed in the English language, from his Anglican Parochial and Plain Sermons to his Catholic Sermons Preached on Various Occasions.
Born in 1801, Newman became an Anglican cleric in 1825; seven years later, he helped launch the Oxford Movement, which sought to emphasize and restore the Catholic aspects of the Church of England while conceiving of Anglicanism as a via media between Rome and Protestantism. In 1845, he was received into the Church by Blessed Dominic Barberi. Ordained to the priesthood in Rome in 1847, Newman brought the Congregation of the Oratory to England the following year.
Pope Leo XIII created Newman a cardinal in 1879. Upon his death in 1890, the Guardian hailed him as “one of the very greatest masters of English style,” “a man of singular purity and beauty of character,” and “an eminent example of personal sanctity.” Pope John Paul II declared Newman venerable in 1991, and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued a decree last July that cleared the way for his beatification.
As Newman pondered the mysterious divine plan unfolding in his own life, he came to a deep and abiding sense that "God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission" (Meditations and Devotions). How true that thought now appears as we consider his long life and the influence which he has had beyond death. He was born at a particular time – 21 February 1801; in a particular place – London; and to a particular family – the firstborn of John Newman and Jemima Fourdrinier. But the particular mission entrusted to him by God ensures that John Henry Newman belongs to every time and place and people.
Newman was born in troubled times which knew not only political and military upheaval but also turbulence of soul. Old certitudes were shaken, and believers were faced with the threat of rationalism on the one hand and fideism on the other. Rationalism brought with it a rejection of both authority and transcendence, while fideism turned from the challenges of history and the tasks of this world to a distorted dependence upon authority and the supernatural. In such a world, Newman came eventually to a remarkable synthesis of faith and reason which were for him "like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth" (Fides et Ratio, Introduction; cf. ibid., 74). It was the passionate contemplation of truth which also led him to a liberating acceptance of the authority which has its roots in Christ, and to the sense of the supernatural which opens the human mind and heart to the full range of possibilities revealed in Christ. "Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on", Newman wrote in The Pillar of the Cloud; and for him Christ was the light at the heart of every kind of darkness. For his tomb he chose the inscription: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem; and it was clear at the end of his life’s journey that Christ was the truth he had found.
But Newman’s search was shot through with pain. Once he had come to that unshakeable sense of the mission entrusted to him by God, he declared: "Therefore, I will trust Him... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him... He does nothing in vain... He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me. Still, He knows what He is about" (Meditations and Devotions). All these trials he knew in his life; but rather than diminish or destroy him they paradoxically strengthened his faith in the God who had called him, and confirmed him in the conviction that God "does nothing in vain". In the end, therefore, what shines forth in Newman is the mystery of the Lord’s Cross: this was the heart of his mission, the absolute truth which he contemplated, the "kindly light" which led him on.
As we thank God for the gift of the Venerable John Henry Newman on the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, we pray that this sure and eloquent guide in our perplexity will also become for us in all our needs a powerful intercessor before the throne of grace. Let us pray that the time will soon come when the Church can officially and publicly proclaim the exemplary holiness of Cardinal John Henry Newman, one of the most distinguished and versatile champions of English spirituality. With my Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican, 22 January 2001.
IOANNES PAULUS II
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| Prayer of Cardinal Newman |
Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Your Spirit and Life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine. It will be You, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You in the way which You love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by my words but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears for You. Amen.
Good Website resource on Cardinal John Newman:www.newmanreader.org
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