Blessed John Henry Newman
National Calendar
for England, Wales, Ireland 9th. October
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Blessed John Henry
Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI at a Mass in Cofton Park, Birmingham
on Sunday 19 September 2010. At the request of the Bishops he has been included
in the National Calendar for England on 9 October as an optional memorial.
Pope Benedict in
his homily at the
Mass of Beatification said:
Cardinal Newman's motto, Cor ad cor
loquitur, or "Heart speaks unto heart", gives us an insight into his
understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the
profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the
Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us
into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons, "a
habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every
season, in every place, in every emergency — prayer, I say, has what may be
called a natural effect in spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no
longer what he was before; gradually — he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and
become imbued with fresh principles" (Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv,
230-231). Today's Gospel tells us that no one can be the servant of two masters
(cf. Lk 16:13), and Blessed John Henry's teaching on prayer explains how the
faithful Christian is definitively taken into the service of the one true
Master, who alone has a claim to our unconditional devotion (cf. Mt 23:10).
Newman helps us to understand what this means for our daily lives: he tells us
that our divine Master has assigned a specific task to each one of us, a
"definite service", committed uniquely to every single person:
"I have my mission", he wrote, "I am a link in a chain, a bond
of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do
good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in
my own place — if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my
calling" (Meditations and Devotions, 301-2).
·
Texts for Mass can be found in the Roman Missal
·
Texts for the
Office of Readings (pdf) are available
A note on the date It is
customary for a Saint or a Blessed to be celebrated on the day of their death
unless it is impeded by another celebration. Blessed John Henry Newman died on
11 August 1890. The Church across the world celebrates St Clare on August 11
and so another date was sought. One of the reasons that 9 October was chosen
was because it falls at the beginning of the University year; an area in which
Newman had a particular interest.
Blessed John Henry Newman, Priest
Born in London in 1801, he was for over twenty years
an Anglican clergyman and Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. His studies of the
early Church led him progressively towards Catholicism, and in 1845 he embraced
“the one true fold of the Redeemer”. In 1847 he was ordained priest and went on
to found the Oratory of St Philip Neri in England. He was a prolific and
influential writer on a variety of subjects. In 1879 he was created Cardinal
by Pope Leo XIII. Praised for his humility, unstinting care of souls and
contributions to the intellectual life of the Church, he died in Birmingham on
11 August 1890.
From the Common of Pastors,
Office Of Readings
Second Reading
From the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman,
Priest
(Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V: Position of My Mind since
1845, London 1864, pp. 238-239, 250-251)
It was like coming into port after a rough sea.
From
the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my
religious opinions to narrate.
In saying this, I do not mean to say that my
mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects;
but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart
whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one
doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual
or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the
fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more
fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness
on that score remains to this day without interruption.
Nor
had I any trouble about receiving those additional articles, which are not
found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I believed already, but not any one
of them was a trial to me. I made a profession of them upon my reception with
the greatest ease, and I have the same ease in believing them now. I am far of
course from denying that every article of the Christian Creed, whether as held
by Catholics or by Protestants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it
is simple fact, that, for myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many
persons are very sensitive of the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive
of them as any one; but I have never been able to see a connexion between
apprehending those difficulties, however keenly, and multiplying them to any
extent, and on the other hand doubting the doctrines to which they are
attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the
subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate. There of course may be
difficulties in the evidence; but I am speaking of difficulties intrinsic to
the doctrines themselves, or to their relations with each other. A man may be
annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem, of which the answer is
or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a
certain particular answer is the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of
a God is, to my own apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet
borne in upon our minds with most power.
People
say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not
believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing
it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God,
and that she had declared this doctrine to be
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