Three Minutes with Newman
The Dream of Gerontius, Praise to the Holiest
September 7, 2024
One of the high points of the Dream of Gerontius is the hymn “Praise to the Holiest” in the height. The hymn is composed of stanzas for five choirs of Angels. It begins with a first choir that sings of Christ, the Son of God who became man to champion our cause, and the angels, his elder race.
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!
To us His elder race He gave
To battle and to win,
Without the chastisement of pain,
Without the soil of sin.
The younger son He will’d to be
A marvel in His birth:
Spirit and flesh his parents were;
His home was heaven and earth.
The Eternal bless’d His child, and arm’d,
And sent him hence afar,
To serve as champion in the field
Of elemental war. {354}
The guardian angel guides Gerontius’ soul amidst the choirs, each choir repeating the refrain:
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! {355}
The second choir sings of the sin of men and God’s mercy:
Woe to thee, man! for he was found
And lost his heritage of heaven,
And fellowship with light.
Above him now the angry sky,
Around the tempest’s din;
Who once had Angels for his friends,
Had but the brutes for kin.
Man lived, toiled and died, and step by step, he was led back to God and to “be a man again.”
And quicken’d by the Almighty’s breath,
And chasten’d by His rod,
And taught by angel-visitings,
At length he sought his God;
And learn’d to call upon His Name,
And in His faith create
A household and a father-land,
A city and a state.
The third choir recounts the trial of the angels, the fall of man, and the debt men must pay:
The Angels, as beseemingly
To spirit-kind was given,
At once were tried and perfected,
And took their seats in heaven.
For them no twilight or eclipse;
No growth and no decay:
‘Twas hopeless, all-ingulfing night,
Or beatific day.
But to the younger race there rose
A hope upon its fall;
And slowly, surely, gracefully,
The morning dawn’d on all.
A double debt he has to pay—
The forfeit of his sins:
The chill of death is past, and now
The penance-fire begins.
Next, the angel tells the soul of its approaching agony, and we catch a glimpse of Jesus:
It is the face of the Incarnate God
Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain; {359}
And yet the memory which it leaves will be
A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;
And yet withal it will the wound provoke,
And aggravate and widen it the more.
When then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,
The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart
All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.
The guardian angel describes the soul’s sorrow as an experience of sickness of love:
Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,
And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,
That one so sweet should e’er have placed Himself
At disadvantage such, as to be used
So vilely by a being so vile as thee.
Next we learn that pains for sin are twofold, and what the essence of purgatory is.
And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—
The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;
The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—
Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.
These words of the guardian angel are followed by tender thoughts which flood Gerontius’ soul:
My soul is in my hand: I have no fear,—
In His dear might prepared for weal or woe.
But hark! a grand, mysterious harmony:
It floods me like the deep and solemn sound
Of many waters.
In the next blog post we will continue with some of the stanzas of the last two choirs of angels, completing this praise of God’s wonderful love for man, and the care of the guardian angels.
