THE
P RTAL
August 2015
Page 11
Thoughts on Newman
The Assumption
of Our Lady
Blessed John Henry Newman produced some meditation on this
Solemnity and Dr Stephen Morgan has been re-reading them
Ihave, for
nine years now, lived adjacent to a Church with the wonderful dedication “The Glorious
Assumption of Our Lady and St Edward the Confessor” but, despite it being the patronal feast and being
situate in the middle of an area with large numbers of summer tourists, I have been unable to persuade those
who matter that making much of the Solemnity of the Assumption on 15th August would be a powerful tool
of the New Evangelisation.
It seems that this summer feast, if marked at all,
might upset local ecumenical relations – although
conversations with the Rector of the Anglican benefice
and even with the Baptist Minister seem to suggest that
it’s the sort of thing they thought we got up to anyway!
The truth is, perhaps, that it’s all too much fuss for the
middle of the dog days of the Summer Holidays. It’s
not as if it’s a particularly central Christian belief, after
all: or is it?
Assumption in terms that make clear that the dogma
stands as an indispensible witness to the great truths
of faith about Christ Himself. The Assumption is
a “wonderful truth” that follows in the train of the
Incarnation itself (Holy Mother of God); it flows directly
from her Immaculate Conception, by which singular
and fitting privilege she was the sinless vessel for that
same Incarnation (Sinless Mother); it stands as a hidden
witness to the fruits of Resurrection (Mystical Rose); it
points directly to the two natures, fully God and fully
Man, in the one divine person of Christ (Tower of
David); it proclaims that God is all-powerful (Powerful
Virgin); it manifests God’s saving action in history (Help
of Christians); it shows that God is true to His promises
(Faithful Virgin); and it marks our own supernatural
destiny in the life of Heaven (Morning Star).
In his Meditations and Devotions, John Henry
Newman begins with a series of meditations for the
month of May, on the titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary
in the Litany of Loreto – the site of a Holy House almost
as renowned as that at Walsingham. He includes eight
meditations on the Assumption with reference to the
litany’s titles of Holy Mother of God, Sinless Mother,
I’d say that Newman more than adequately
Mystical Rose, Tower of David, Powerful Virgin, Help
of Christians, Most Faithful Virgin and Morning Star. demonstrates that the dogma of the Assumption is
far from a peripheral teaching of the Church but one
indispensible witness
of those developments that he understood as being a
Although the language is that of the nineteenth necessary and providential unfolding of the faith into
century, when sentence construction was an art and its proper corollaries.
commas and colons, semi-colons and ellipses were
rather more common than full-stops, these meditations
Although it occurred sixty years after his own death,
have a directness and simplicity that still make them Newman would surely have rejoiced that the Servant
profitable spiritual exercises. The meditations were of God, Pope Pius XII, in defining the Assumption
written for the boys of the Oratory School, who are to be a dogma of the faith, to be held, believed and
likely to have been no more attentive than teenage boys professed by all Catholics, was infallibly proclaiming
of any age. Clearly aware of how easily his audience a truth necessary to salvation, to be believed as an
would become distracted and fidgety, Newman ensures article of the Faith, and thought requisite or necessary
that the directness and simplicity is complemented by to salvation.
an admirable brevity without prejudice to the richness
of the doctrine he wanted to hand on.
Perhaps I’ll ask again if we can mark the Solemnity
here in my sylvan fastness this year, in honour of
Through each of the meditations, Newman draws Blessed John Henry Newman, four days after the 125th
a direct line from litany’s titles of Our Lady to the anniversary of his heavenly birthday.
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