“And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered.” Matt. 4: 2.
The season of humiliation, which precedes Easter, lasts for forty days, in memory of our Lord’s long fast in the wilderness. Accordingly on this day, the first Sunday in Lent, we read the Gospel which gives an account of it; and in the Collect we pray Him, who for our sakes fasted forty days and forty nights, to bless our abstinence to the good of our souls and bodies.
Sr. Lutgart Govaert FSO“If Mary is the Mother of God, Christ must be literally Emmanuel, God with us. And hence it was, that, when time went on, and the bad spirits and false prophets grew stronger and bolder, and found a way into the Catholic body itself, then the Church, guided by God, could find no more effectual and sure way of expelling them than that of using this word Deipara, ‘Mother of God” against them; and, on the other hand, when they came up again from the realms of darkness, and plotted the utter overthrow of Christian faith in the sixteenth Century, then they could find no more certain expedient for their hateful purpose than that of reviling and blaspheming the prerogatives of Mary, for they knew full well that, if they could once get the world do dishonour the Mother, the dishonour of the Son would follow close. The Church and Satan agreed together in this, that Son and Mother went together”.
Newman was a high profile intellectual and a man of luminous spirituality.
Benedict XVI’s Homily in Viterbo/Italy during his pastoral visit on September 6th.
Westminster Cathedral, 2nd May 2009
It is fitting to recall and to give thanks for past benefits of which we are the beneficiaries down to the present day. That is particularly appropriate on the occasion of an anniversary of jubilee. Our celebration today has precisely this purpose: we commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the foundation of The Oratory School by John Henry Cardinal Newman.
Pope Benedict XVI recognised the healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan in 2001 as a miracle resulting from the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God John Henry Newman.
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1. Newman on the eve of his elevation to the office of cardinal
The elevation of John Henry Newman to the dignity of the office of cardinal can be seen as the apotheosis of his sorely tried life. Thus, one ought to attribute to him the full and definitive rehabilitation of the thinker-theologian, subjected to mysterious accusations, malevolent insinuations and systematic criticism for many years. One need only consider the drastic judgement of Monsignor Talbot, Chamberlain to Pius IX, and one of Newman’s most implacable adversaries. He was principally responsible for the diffidence within Roman circles shown to the convert and for the measures taken following upon this attitude, including those which impeded him from returning to Oxford. [1] Talbot wrote to Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster,[2] hoping to find a sympathetic ear: “Dr. Newman is the most dangerous man in England.”
Were it otherwise, had he not confidence in the darkest day, and the most hostile district, he would be relinquishing a principal note, as it is called, of the Church. She is Catholic, because she brings a universal remedy for a universal disease.
A strange time this may seem to some of you, my brethren, and a strange place, to commence an enterprise such as that, which relying on God’s mercy, we are undertaking this day. In this huge city, amid a population of human beings, so vast that each is solitary, so various that each is independent, which, like the ocean, yields before and closes over every attempt made to influence and impress it,-in this mere aggregate of individuals, which admits of neither change nor reform, because it has no internal order, or disposition of parts, or mutual dependence, because it has nothing to change from and nothing to change to, where no one knows his next-door neighbour, where in every place are found a thousand worlds, each pursuing its own functions unimpeded by the rest-how can we, how can a handful of men, do any service worthy of the Lord who has called us, and the objects to which our lives are dedicated?
Vi ringrazio, Monsignore, per la participazione che m’avete fatto dell’ alto onore che il Santo Padre si è degnato conferire sulla mia umile persona—
And, if I ask your permission to continue my address to you, not in your musical language, but in my own dear mother tongue, it is because in the latter I can better express my feelings on this most gracious announcement which you have brought to me than if I attempted what is above me.
First of all then, I am led to speak of the wonder and profound gratitude which came upon me, and which is upon me still, at the condescension and love towards me of the Holy Father in singling me out for so immense an honour. It was a great surprise. Such an
“Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared, though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” Hebrews 5:7, 8.
The chief mystery of our holy faith is the humiliation of the Son of God to temptation and suffering, as described in this passage of Scripture. In truth, it is a more overwhelming mystery even than that which is involved in the doctrine of the Trinity. I say, more overwhelming, not greater –
