Uncategorized
“O death, where is thy sting?” and St. John Henry’s Newman’s prayer
February 27, 2026
“O death, where is thy sting?”
May he support us all the day long,
Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes,
And the busy world is hushed, and the fever of its life is over,
And our work is done.
Then in his mercy may he give us a safe lodging,
And holy rest, and peace at the last…
-A prayer of John Henry Newman (from sermon Wisdom and Innocence)
Saturday, February 21, 2026 was the 225th anniversary of the birth of John Henry Newman, a day of celebration for those who have found wisdom and comfort in his writings. I attended a different celebration that morning, although celebration seems to be an odd way to describe the memorial service for one as young as Nate (27), the only son of my friends Mark and Kym. Although Nate died far too young, his death was perceived as a gateway to life eternal where pain is gone and tears are no more. For this reason, I witnessed Christian joy despite profound grief, the triumph of hope over sorrow, and the blessed assurance that the empty tomb was heaven’s triumphant response to the cruelty of the grave.
And so I went to Newman, again, for understanding. He lived a long life (1801-1890), and thus experienced the passing of many friends.
On the loss of one great friend, Newman lamented:
a heavy, sudden unexpected blow – I shall not see him now, till I cross the stream that he has crossed. How dense is our ignorance of the future, a darkness which can be felt, and the keenest consequence and token of the Fall. Till we remind ourselves of what we are..
Of another:
How life is being stripped of all that makes it bright.
And another:
No one has ever had such friends as I have had. It is the penalty of living, to lose the great props of life.
The pain unbearable, he said:
There is something awful in the silent resistless sweep of time – and as years go on, and friends taken away, one draws the thought of those who remain about one, as in cold weather one buttons up great coats and capes for protection.
He comforted himself with this piercing consolation (which he shared with others grieving loss):
such dreadful blows do issue in great blessings, and when we look back upon them years afterward, we see what mercy there is in them, and learn with all our hearts to kiss the scourge…which has made our hearts bleed. This is after the wound is healed, but oh! long it will be in healing.
Graham Greene touches the sacred irony in his book “Brighton Rock” when he comments on “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” How can it be that one can suffer the loss of a beloved, yet see God’s mercy nonetheless? Yet even now, one may turn to God with his whole heart.
Reverend Dr. Ian Ker, the foremost biographer of John Henry Newman, also wrote a biography of G.K. Chesterton. Kerr described Chesterton as a “second Newman.” He records the words Chesterton wrote his wife Frances on the passing of her sister Gertrude:
for real strength (I don’t like the word “comfort”), for real peace, no human words are much good except perhaps some of the unfathomable, unintelligible, unconquerable epigrams of the Bible. One such text was “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints.”
He concluded:
For her death awoke in one “a passionate sense of the ‘value’ of her life, so that even her death was a thing of incalculable value and mysterious sweetness: it is awful, tragic, desolating, desperately hard to bear – but still precious.
Chesterton knew what those attending Nate’s service (birthday party) knew – that his death was “beautiful.” He observes that the reason that it did not seem beautiful in the moment was that “we do not see it now. What we see is her absence: but her Death is not her absence, but her Presence somewhere else.” That somewhere else is home, for eternity, with Jesus.
John Henry Newman and G.K. Chesterton give us words to live by. May they also be a great coat and cape of protection at such time as this when death comes so close.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory…But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
-1 Corinthians 15:55-57
