Newman Beatus
Today’s Boston Globe carries the welcome news of the coming beatification of John Henry Newman.
Pope Benedict XVI ruled that the recovery of a Marshfield, Mass., resident who for years suffered from a spinal disorder was miraculous, meaning Newman can now be beatified.
The miracle concerns the medically inexplicable cure of John “Jack’’ Sullivan, a Catholic deacon in Marshfield who suffered from debilitating back pain for years but was cured after praying to Newman.
In a statement, Sullivan said he was filled “with an intense sense of gratitude and thanksgiving’’ over learning that Newman would now be beatified.
As a small contribution to the general thanksgiving, here is a passage from one of Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons, “The Thought of God, the Stay of the Soul:”
We may indeed love things created with great intenseness, but such affection, when disjoined from the love of the Creator, is like a stream running in a narrow channel, impetuous, vehement, turbid. The heart runs out, as it were, only at one door; it is not an expanding of the whole man. Created natures cannot open us, or elicit the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us, and through which we really live. None but the presence of our Maker can enter us; for to none besides can the whole heart in all its thoughts and feelings be unlocked and subjected. “Behold,” He says, “I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” “My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.” “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” [Rev. iii. 20. John xiv. 23. Gal. iv. 6. 1 John iii. 20.]
It is this feeling of simple and absolute confidence and communion, which soothes and satisfies those to whom it is vouchsafed. We know that even our nearest friends enter into us but partially, and hold intercourse with us only at times; whereas the consciousness of a perfect and enduring Presence, and it alone, keeps the heart open. Withdraw the Object on which it rests, and it will relapse again into its state of confinement and constraint; and in proportion as it is limited, either to certain seasons or to certain affections, the heart is straitened and distressed. If it be not over bold to say it, He who is infinite can alone be its measure; He alone can answer to the mysterious assemblage of feelings and thoughts which it has within it. “There is no creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” [Heb. iv. 12.]
Tags: Newman
on July 4th, 2009 at 9:21 am
I’m interested in the view that only God can “elicit the ten thousand mental senses which belong to us, and through which we really live.” It recalls the idea that Augustine bequeathed to the West that the soul has its senses, too. But ten thousand?! And that God “elicits” them, which I take to mean that his presence, or awareness of his presence, makes possible sensitivities which we otherwise would not possess or exercise. An evocative statement, at any rate. Thanks, Bob.
on July 4th, 2009 at 10:53 am
For me, Fr. Joe, the reference to “ten thousand” immediately brought to mind a passage written by my favorite (or perhaps I should write favourite) English Catholic author, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in a passage from his poem, Inversnaid (34):
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is –
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
Thanks to you, too, Fr. Bob!
on July 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Michael Hovey,
what a fascinating association. As you know, Newman received Hopkins into the Catholic Church.
I’m not sure where Newman got the figure from, but I agree with JAK that Newman would maintain that “[God's] presence, or awareness of his presence, makes possible sensitivities which we otherwise would not possess or exercise.”
Here I’m reminded of Jonathan Edwards’ “Religious Affections” as an enlargement of the human heart and senses empowered by the Holy Spirit.
on July 4th, 2009 at 11:37 am
I think 10,000 was also a somewhat common trope to represent infinity, no? “Amazing Grace,” the length of Tolkien’s Ring series, etc.
Of course, a million is nothing today, nor even a billion, and a trillion is soon going to be insufficiently large!
on July 4th, 2009 at 11:54 am
The 10,000 is a biblical way of expressing vast numbers. Newman uses it rather often in his sermons and writings. And then there is his famous statement: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”
on July 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am
It’s a trope; the biblical “myriad” = 10,000.
Also (famously) from Newman: “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.”
on July 4th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
wow — JAK and Kathy crossing the ether in sync.
An item on “Amazing Grace” from Wikipedia:
“In her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe quoted three stanzas as seemingly from one hymn, two of them corrupt versions of Amazing Grace stanzas, and one reading:
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.
Despite its relatively poor mesh with the rest of the hymn (the change from “I” to “we,” change of subject, no reference for “there”), a form of this stanza became common as part of Amazing Grace in hymnals in the early twentieth century, due in large part to the influential hymnodist and publisher Edwin Othello Excell. While the stanza is often credited to John P. Rees (1828-1900), it antedates his birth. It was in print by 1790, added to an old and widely-varied hymn most usually beginning “Jerusalem, my happy home”, and was still appearing as part of this hymn in books published around the time of Stowe’s book.”
on July 4th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Consider also the use of “myriad”,originally = ten thousand, but often used of the indefinitely large number.
on July 4th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
(It is enough that the student should become like the teacher, Fr. K.)
Also from Jerusalem, My Happy Home, an originally 26-stanza hymn possibly written by someone known only as FBP who may have been a Catholic priest and may have been imprisoned in the Tower of London:
There David stands, with harp in hand
As master of the quire ;
Ten thousand times that man were blest
That might this music hear !
on July 4th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Apparently I have it reversed, but actually the situation is made thus more interesting. The common view is that the Greek word originally had a sense like “boundless” and subsequently came also to be used for “ten thousand”.
on July 4th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Things begin to go bad between Saul and David when the women who come singing and dancing to meet them sing: “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Sam 18:7).
on July 4th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Pope Benedict XVI ruled that the recovery of a Marshfield, Mass., resident who for years suffered from a spinal disorder was miraculous, meaning Newman can now be beatified.
I am wondering if requiring a miracle for beatification — especially in the case of someone so well-known and venerated as Cardinal Newman — is really a wise policy. As also reported in The Boston Globe, this miracle is one of the least convincing I have heard about:
on July 4th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Was Newman a mystic? I mean the sort wo had extraordinary, ecstatic contact with God? Talk of spiritual senses makes me wonder, though “10,000″ of them is not a phrase I’ve ever come across in the writings of any mystics.
(When is Thomas Merton going to be proposed for canonization? Too many warts? Not everyone was enamored of Newman either. I’d nominate Chesterton :-) We need some funny saints these days.)
on July 4th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Merton got bumped from a new edition of the catechism, replaced by Mother Seton, I believe. The bishops said people could relate to her better than to the example of Merton’s life.
So don’t hold you breath for his canonization… ;-)
on July 4th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Hmm. Interesting, Mr. Gibson. I wonder if another qualitcation for American bishops is that they be utterly conventional.
On the other hand, if Newman had been the soul of conventionality he would not have even imagined switching churches. I wonder what the American bishops– and the pope and curia — think of his Idea of a University.It was written after his conversion, which makes it all the more remarkable to me.
on July 5th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I seem to remember that somewhere Newman wrote (words to the effect that) “it would be better that human life be utterly destroyed on earth than that one single deliberate venial sin be committed.” I’m sure I didn’t imagine this; and hyperbole does have limits; so I need some help from wiser minds. This is a hard saying and who can accept it. Fr. Komonchak?
on July 5th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Dcn. Brian Caroll,
It’s a bit more extreme even than that:
on July 5th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
I think he was making the point that physical evils do not equal in weight moral evil, are not to be compared to it. He was addressing the question: “How is it, that at this time Catholic countries happen to be behind Protestants in civilization?” And he prepared for his answer by arguing that the Church’s principal aim was to save individuals from their sins, and in particular from the sins of their hearts.
Here is partial context: “The Church goes forth on the one errand, as I have said, of healing the diseases of the soul. Look, I say, into any book of moral theology you will; there is much there which may startle you: you will find principles hard to digest; explanations which seem to you subtle; details which distress you; you will find abundance of what will make excellent matter of attack at Exeter Hall; but you will find from first to last this one idea—(nay, you will find that very matter of attack upon her is occasioned by her keeping it in view; she would be saved the odium, she would not have thus bared her side to the sword, but for her fidelity to it)—the one idea, I say, that sin is the enemy of the soul; and that sin especially consists, not in overt acts, but in the thoughts of the heart.
This, then, is the point I insist upon, in answer to the objection which you have today urged against me. The Church aims, not at making a show, but at doing a work. She regards this world, and all that is in it, as a mere shadow, as dust and ashes, compared with the value of one single soul. She holds that, unless she can, in her own way, do good to souls, it is no use her doing anything; she holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse. She considers the action of this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed in their respective spheres; she would rather save the soul of one single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining beggar of Palermo, than draw a hundred lines of railroad through the length and breadth of Italy, or carry out a sanitary reform, in its fullest details, in every city of Sicily, except so far as these great national works tended to some spiritual good beyond them.”