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.”