Newman as a Master of the Spirit

If ever the Venerable John Henry Newman is canonized and made a doctor of the Church, the latter title will be his for being like the two St. Teresas—a doctor of souls—as well as for being a theologian and defender of the faith. He speaks to us now as a spiritual writer in twelve volumes of sermons plus a volume of meditations and devotions. A "master of the spirit," as Pope John Paul II called him, Newman's main concern in these writings is the call to holiness. And since holiness means a total surrender of one's self to God, we find that a dominant theme in them is the necessity of an uncompromising obedience with self-denial, consistency, and detatchment as its measure and guarantee. Though not a dominant emphasis but assumed throughout is the role of grace which for Newman is principally the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the power behind obedience and indeed the source of every virtue in the Christian life.

To highlight the theme of obedience, we might begin with a famous passage in Newman's account of his conversion to the Catholic faith that reveals his own heroic fidelity to the divine will. It is that dramatic moment recounted in the Apologia pro Vita Sua when he describes the shock he experienced in the summer of 1839 while studying a heresy of the fifth century. It was only too fearfully plain to him that the position of the Church of England exactly resembled the position of the heretics back then. "I saw my face in that mirror, and I was a Monophysite." Eventually for him, this meant the end of the legitimacy of the Church of England, the futility of the great cause he was leading, and his severance from everything he had loved short of God Himself. "At this time," he tells us, "I wrote my sermon on Divine Calls [which] ends thus: 'O that we could take that simple view of things, as to feel the one thing which lies before us is to please God! What gain is it to be applauded, admired, courted, followed—compared with this one aim, of not being disobedient to a heavenly vision?'"¹ Apart from the whole course of thought and event that brought about Newman's conversion, we know that the key is here—that this man followed every clue to the divine will as he discovered it, and once it was wholly clear to him, he obeyed it at all costs, "overlooking every other tie."

With his flock at Oxford, he asked, "Is not holiness the result of many patient, repeated efforts after obedience, gradually working in us, and first modifying and then changing our hearts?"² That is from the first sermon in the initial volume of the Parochial and Plain Sermons, and at the end of the volume we have the whole of the Christian life spelled out in these terms:

To love our brethren with a resolution which no obstacle can overcome . . .—to perform all our relative daily duties most watchfully,—to check every evil thought, and bring the whole mind into captivity to the law of Christ,—to be patient, cheerful, forgiving, meek, honest, and true,—to persevere in this good work till death, making fresh and fresh advances, towards perfection—and after all, even to the end, to confess ourselves unprofitable servants . . .—these are some of the difficult realities of religious obedience, which we must pursue, and which the Apostles in high measure attained, and which we may well bless God's holy name, if He enables us to make our own.

(PS, 1:344)

Newman speaks here of the difficult realities of obedience, a topic on which he is at his most searching as he probes in ways to set us spiritually on edge. He asks...