THE
P RTAL
December 2016
Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
The Allure of Christmas
Christmas, Newman and Radio 3 altogether with
The Revd Dr Stephen Morgan
O
f course, it’s the sheer child-like excitement of gifts and mince pies and mulled wine and twinkling
decorations. It’s the natural comfort of familiar carols and routines, warm log fires – unless you’re a
member of the Ordinariate of the Southern Cross – and cosiness.
It’s Midnight Mass and the high point when the deacon
beautifully intones those magical words, “The twenty-fifth
day of December, when ages beyond number had run their
course…The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according
to the flesh”. It isn’t difficult – at a sensual level – to
understand the attraction of Christmas and yet, as Catholic
Christians, we are forced to admit that, as first class feasts
go, this one is distinctly second class when compared with
Easter. Yes, we know that if there were no Christmas, then
there would be no Easter, but it is the Paschal mystery of
Cross and Empty Tomb that are the culmination of God’s
engagement with Man. Neither the chronological nor
the sequential dependency of Easter upon Christmas can
hide that it is the “Christ is Risen” that is the centre of the
Cosmos, not “Glory to God in the Highest”.
Every Christmas, for the last few years, that sole
justification for the BBC Licence Fee, Radio 3, has
run a competition for today’s composers. The task is
to set the words of a carol (usually an obscure one) to
a new tune and to arrange it for choir. I suspect that
the musician in Newman – a more enthusiastic than
virtuosic one, by all accounts – would delight in this
annual Christmas game.
This year’s text seems to me to be one which captures
both the solemn Divine mystery of this feast of the
Incarnation and the simple human enjoyment of
it. It is a text that was written in England before the
great and unnecessary religious unpleasantnesses of
the sixteenth century, so I suppose that it too might
count as Patrimony. In any event, I reproduce it here,
Writing his sermon notes for Christmas 1851, Blessed confident that Newman would love it as much as I do.
John Henry Newman recognised this incongruity: the Whether the attempts to set it to music will similarly
feast we humanly like the better, is in fact the lesser in delight remains to be seen – by the time you read this,
importance. He called the homily “The Special Charm we shall know.
of Christmas”. One can readily imagine our blessed
Alleluia! A new work is come on hand
co-patron at the Midnight Mass which he celebrated,
Through might and grace of Goddes son
ascending the pulpit of the Birmingham Oratory - then
To save the lost of every land.
in the old gin distillery in Alcester Street, Birmingham
Alleluia.
and a far cry from the splendour of the church on the
For now is free that erst was bound
Hagley Road where the Ordinariate Pilgrimage came
We may well sing
to its conclusion this last October – to deliver himself
Alleluia.
of it. Only the brief outline notes of the sermon survive.
Now is fulfilled the prophecy
Of David and of Jeremy
This is the case for most of his preaching after he made
And also of Isaiah.
his submission to the Catholic Church, whereas we have
Alleluia.
full texts for most of his Anglican sermons. What those
Sing we therefore both loud and high
notes reveal is a tender understanding of human nature,
Alleluia.
fused with the richest of English spirituality: “patrimony”,
we might call it. It is, Newman notes, the easier to
Alleluia, this sweet song
understand: the feast of Christ’s coming, always more
Out of a green branch it sprung;
cheering than that of His going. “All our human fears are
God send us the life that lasteth long.
soothed by Christmas … Christ comes as our guest, and
Alleluia.
coming, He brightens everything…He makes the world
Now joy and bliss be him among
our home for He deigns to be the light of it… eclipsing
That thus can sing
the world’s merrymaking.” (JHN, Sermon Notes of J H
Alleluia.
Newman, (Longmans: London, 1913), pp.95f.)