Fr. Peter
Sprinting to Sainthood, John Henry Newman
February 24, 2024
Sprinting to Sainthood
St John Henry Newman writes to his friend William Copeland on Ash Wednesday, 14th February 1866: “Your Christmas Turkey was wonderful – but time passes so quick, it is now a matter of history. We are steaming to Easter, and it will be upon us before we know where we are.” (Letters and Diaries XXII, p.155).
Newman recognised that Lent invites us to live out the wisdom of reflecting before acting. We should acknowledge the sinful consequence of not doing so in the past and the present. He taught that the penances that we choose help us to re-assess our targets, in order to more faithfully live out the responsibilities we inherited through Baptism and Confirmation, to be missionary disciples.
A true Christian, then, may be defined as one who has a ruling sense of God’s presence within him…so that he faithfully realises that all his thoughts, all the first springs of his moral life, all his motives and his wishes are open to Almighty God. (Parochial and Plain Sermons V, 16).
For forty days we are in ‘spiritual circuit training’, with the goal of joining St Peter on his morning run to Christ’s tomb. So that we can experience, with him, as Pope Francis states: “the beginning of resurrection in his heart” and, our own too. We do this by following the words of St John Henry Newman as our daily work-out guide:
We cannot change ourselves, this we know full well, or, at least, a very little experience will teach us. God alone can change us, God alone can give us the desires, affection, principles, views, and tastes which a change implies: this, too, we know. (Parochial and Plain Sermons V, 17).
Every spreader of Gospel seeds seeks what Newman longed for:
Ah! If I had any portion of St Paul’s true zeal in my heart, I should have some portion of gentleness in my words. (Letters and Diaries XV, p.277)
Newman strolled along the streets of Oxford and Birmingham, chatting about the message of Jesus when the opportunity naturally arose and calling on his parishioners on foot or horseback. He invites us, in our own areas, to proclaim the risen Lord each day by:
…thinking habitually and constantly of Him and His deeds and sufferings. It is to have Him before our minds as one whom we may contemplate, worship, and address when we rise up, when we lie down, when we are at home or abroad, when we are working or walking, or at rest, when we are along, or again when we are in company; this is meditating. (Parochial and Plain Sermons VI, 4).
Pope Francis alludes to Newman’s reflection entitled ‘St Paul’s Gift of Sympathy’ when he remarks that pledging to be missionary disciples means:
…we want to enter fully into the fabric of society, sharing the lives of all, listening to their concerns, helping them materially and spiritually in their needs, rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep; arm in arm with others committed to building a new world. (Evangelii Gaudium, 269).
Let us become incarnations of Christ this Lent in our thoughts, words and deeds.
Fr Peter Conley
