The Heart of John Henry Newman: Beating with the Spirit of the Liturgy

Jeremy J. Priest reviewed John Henry Newman on Worship, Reverence, & Ritual, edited by Peter Kwasniewski, at Adoremus Bulletin.

"As Newman’s writings witness, what he passed along to the faithful were the definite things he received from the Lord in prayer and the deep practice of the liturgical life of the Church. Indeed, the continued publication of Newman’s writings attest to this pithy precept: 'necessary is it to have something to say, if we desire anyone to listen' (424). Even huddled in the silence of his study, Newman never lacked 'something to say.'"

Steeped in history

Catholic Memes

Card. Newman: It is as if He delighted in having to suffer

by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

The price [our Lord] paid was nothing short of the whole treasure of his blood, poured forth to the last drop from his veins and Sacred Heart.

He shed his whole life for us; he left himself empty of his all. He left his throne on high; he gave up his home on earth; he parted with his Mother, he gave his strength and his toil, he gave his body and soul, he offered up his passion, his crucifixion, and his death, that man should not be bought for nothing ...

On earth he came, and a death he died, a death of inconceivable suffering; and all this he did as a free offering to his Father, not as forcing his acceptance of it.

From beginning to the end it was in the highest sense a voluntary work; and this is what is so overpowering to the mind in the thought of it. It is as if he delighted in having to suffer; as if he wished to show all creatures, what would otherwise have seemed impossible, that the Creator could practice, in the midst of his heavenly blessedness, the virtues of a creature, self-abasement and humility. It is as if he wished, all-glorious as he was from all eternity, as a sort of addition (if we may so speak) to his perfections, to submit to a creature's condition in its most afflictive form. It is, if we may use human language, a prodigality of charity ... Or, rather, and that is what I wish to insist upon, it suggests to us, as by a specimen, the infinitude of God ... The outward exhibition of infinitude is mystery; and the mysteries of nature and of grace are nothing else than the mode in which his infinitude encounters us and is brought home to our minds.

ht CERC

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One does not simply

CatholicMemes

Dad29: St. John Cardinal Newman on Liturgy

via Dad29

The whole sermon is necessary reading, but this excerpt is a gem:

...In these times especially, we should be on our guard against those who hope, by inducing us to lay aside our forms, at length to make us lay aside our Christian hope altogether. This is why the Church itself is attacked, because it is the living form, the visible body of religion; and shrewd men know that when it goes, religion will go too. This is why they rail at so many usages as superstitious; or propose alterations and changes, a measure especially calculated to shake the faith of the multitude. Recollect, then, that things indifferent in themselves become important to us when we are used to them.

The services and ordinances of the Church are the outward form in which religion has been for ages represented to the world, and has ever been known to us. Places consecrated to God's honour, clergy carefully set apart for His service, the Lord's-day piously observed, the public forms of prayer, the decencies of worship, these things, viewed as a whole, are sacred relatively to us, even if they were not, as they are, divinely sanctioned. Rites which the Church has {78} appointed, and with reason,—for the Church's authority is from Christ,—being long used, cannot be disused without harm to our souls. Confirmation, for instance, may be argued against, and undervalued; but surely no one who in the common run of men wilfully resists the Ordinance, but will thereby be visibly a worse Christian than he otherwise would have been. He will find (or rather others will find for him, for he will scarcely know it himself), that he has declined in faith, humility, devotional feeling, reverence, and sobriety. And so in the case of all other forms, even the least binding in themselves, it continually happens that a speculative improvement is a practical folly, and the wise are taken in their own craftiness.

Therefore, when profane persons scoff at our forms, let us argue with ourselves thus—and it is an argument which all men, learned or unlearned, can enter into: "These forms, even were they of mere human origin (which learned men say is not the case, but even if they were), are at least of as spiritual and edifying a character as the rites of Judaism. Yet Christ and His Apostles did not even suffer these latter to be irreverently treated or suddenly discarded. Much less may we suffer it in the case of our own; lest, stripping off from us the badges of our profession, we forget there is a faith for us to maintain, and a world of sinners to be eschewed."
....

Tell us again how rock'n'roll fits into his vision.

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Some words of ... encouragement

The whole course of Christianity from the first ... is but one series of troubles and disorders.  Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.  The Church is ever ailing ... Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of truth dim, its adherents scattered.  The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony.

- Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

via cerc

This is a world of conflict, and of vicissitude amid the conflict. The Church is ever militant; sometimes she gains, sometimes she loses; and more often she is at once gaining and losing in different parts of her territory. What is ecclesiastical history but a record of the ever-doubtful fortune of the battle, though its issue is not doubtful? Scarcely are we singing Te Deum, when we have to turn to our Misereres: scarcely are we in peace, when we are in persecution: scarcely have we gained a triumph, when we are visited by a scandal. Nay, we make progress by means of reverses; our griefs are our consolations; we lose Stephen, to gain Paul, and Matthias replaces the traitor Judas.  (Historical Sketches, Volume 2, Introduction)

- Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

via New Theological Movement

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