The Portal March 2015 | Page 14

THE P RTAL March 2015 UK Pages - page 14 Thoughts on Newman Jesus the Lover of Souls Dr Stephen Morgan opens for us Newman’s understanding of the inextricable link in the vocation of the teacher between academic and moral education One of the most remarkable volumes of Blessed John Henry Newman’s works ever published was the small collection, called Meditations and Devotions, that he brought out in the uniform edition of his works published first in 1878. They are dedicated to the boys of the Oratory School and proof positive, if such were needed, of his understanding of the inextricable link in the vocation of the teacher between academic and moral education. It was belief in this link that lay at the heart of his dispute with Edward Hawkins at Oriel in the late 1820s. He clearly felt strongly enough about it then to be prepared to lose his position and, in his later years, put it at the heart of both the Irish university project and the Oratory School. vivid, brief and deeply moving Newman’s underlying attachment to this idea is expressed in the title of one of his Meditations and Devotions. Written for Good Friday, it bears the title ‘Jesus the Lover of Souls’. One of twelve meditations written for this most solemn of days, each bearing a title given to the Lord in traditional Catholic devotions, they are vivid, brief and deeply moving. Teenage boys, then as now, (believe me I have been one, been brother to two and father to two), are not sophisticated animals. They are, at heart, simple creatures and any appeal to their piety is likely to go unheeded if there is anything of the sugary about it. Newman knew this, as only one who had spent his entire adult life working with this difficult and unforgiving constituency would know, and his meditations for Good Friday are direct to the point of being blunt. a blessed relief They get going from the first sentence with none of the “throat-clearing” that would have instantly lost the attention of his intended audience. For us, of an age whose prose is less florid than was common in the nineteenth century, this is blessed relief. I am sure I cannot be the only one who has failed to complete my reading of more Victorian writers than I can shake a stick at, on account of endless orotund phrases, overblown adjectives, a surfeit of adverbs and sentences of such complexity that one can contents page scarcely remember, at their end, whence they had their beginning. In ‘Jesus the Lover of Souls’ the patron of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham reminds his readers, as they contemplate the crucified Christ, that it was for this, for the love of human souls, for their salvation that Christ became man: that he “consent[ed] to veil His glory in mortal flesh”. The force of the claim that “He loves each of us so much that He has died for each one as fully and absolutely as if there were no one else for Him to die for” can scarcely have been lost on the boys of the Oratory School any more than it should be lost on us. The enormity of sin is not a mystery that finds much room in the homiletic, devotional or pastoral language of our own time. For Newman, however, it could not be escaped. It was the sheer scandal of the creature asserting himself against the Creator that had necessitated the suffering of Christ. He had a keen sense of the need to pray for the conversion of sinners – himself included – with an urgency that stemmed from his belief that Jesus was the lover of souls. As we approach the Easter Triduum, he would have us redouble those prayers in absolute confidence that only through our sacramental insertion into the Paschal Mystery could that love be consummated. Surely a sentence to arouse the attention of the boys of the Oratory School, he ended this short mediation with a reminder to the unrepentant: “Make them understand that [otherwise] they are going straight to hell, and save them from themselves and from Satan.”