Three Minutes with Newman
Dream of Gerontius, Praise to the Holiest (continued)
September 14, 2024
In earlier posts, St. John Henry Newman’s long poem, The Dream of Gerontius, about man’s ascent to God at the moment of death, has been considered. In this masterpiece of poetry, various choirs of Angels take us in a crescendo of praise, leading to this encounter. The soul ascends as if on steps of a great staircase while the choirs sing praises to God.
Throughout this journey, the Guardian Angel accompanies the soul of Gerontius, narrating the power and goodness of God, known only to the angels who behold Him face to face. The angels says:
“We have gain’d the stairs
Which rise towards the Presence-chamber; there
A band of mighty Angels keep the way
On either side, and hymn the Incarnate God.
Father, whose goodness none can know, but they
Who see Thee face to face,
By man hath come the infinite display
Of thy victorious grace;
But fallen man—the creature of a day—
Skills not that love to trace.
It needs, to tell the triumph Thou hast wrought,
An Angel’s deathless fire, an Angel’s reach of
thought.
Next the Guardian Angel tells the journeying soul of an Angel whom Newman will subsequently call the Angel of the Agony. He is the one who accompanied Jesus in his sorrowful agony in the Garden.
It needs that very Angel, who with awe,
Amid the garden shade,
The great Creator in His sickness saw,
Soothed by a creature’s aid,
And agonized, as victim of the Law
Which He Himself had made;
For who can praise Him in His depth and height,
But he who saw Him reel amid that solitary fight?
At the gates of heaven the soul hears the beautiful strain of a Fourth Choir of Angels:
Praise to the Holiest in the height,
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!
The choir recounts man’s fall from grace and the Creator’s will to save his creatures:
The foe blasphemed the Holy Lord,
As if He reckon’d ill,
In that He placed His puppet man
The frontier place to fill.
For, even in his best estate,
With amplest gifts endued,
A sorry sentinel was he,
A being of flesh and blood.
Man was a “sorry sentinel” guarding the gifts of God, but God in his faithfulness was not be undone:
[ As though a thing, who for his help
Must needs possess a wife,
Could cope with those proud rebel hosts
Who had angelic life. ]
And when, by blandishment of Eve,
That earth-born Adam fell,
He shriek’d in triumph, and he cried,
“A sorry sentinel;
“The Maker by His word is bound,
Escape or cure is none;
He must abandon to his doom,
And slay His darling son.”
Then at last the Guardian Angel exclaims:
“And now the threshold, as we traverse it,
Utters aloud its glad responsive chant.”
And the fifth choir of Angels breaks forth in a joyous chorus of adoration.
Praise to the Holiest in the height
And in the depth be praise:
In all His words most wonderful;
Most sure in all His ways!
O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.
O wisest love! that flesh and blood
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail;
And that a higher gift than grace
Should flesh and blood refine,
God’s Presence and His very Self,
And Essence all-divine.
O generous love! that He who smote
In man for man the foe,
The double agony in man
For man should undergo;
And in the garden secretly,
And on the cross on high,
Should teach His brethren and inspire
To suffer and to die.
The famous composer Edward Elgar set Newman’s Dream to music in 1900. This gorgeous oratorio reaches a climax with the piercing notes of the refrain of Praise to the Holiest in the Height, which is included in most hymnbooks even today. We join in the praise of God with the Angels and the notes of the oratorio: O, Loving wisdom, O wisest love, O generous love “who smote in man for man the foe.”
Over the next weeks we will continue and complete our reflections on this magnificent poem.
