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John Henry Newman was a convert, theologian, writer and poet. He was born on 21 February 1801 in London and died on 11 August 1890 in Birmingham (England). He was raised in the Church of England (Episcopalian) and was educated at Oxford University. After graduating, he became an Anglican clergyman and was made Vicar of St Mary's (the Oxford University church). Newman became a leader in the Tractarian Movement, which sought to combat the beginnings of "rationalism" and unbelief by reasserting the Church's teaching authority and by looking to the example of the Church in the early centuries. He read all the Christian writings of the first 500 years in the original Greek and Latin. As he studied and thought more about the history and development of the Church, Newman realised that the Roman Catholic Church is the true continuation of the early Church. On 9 October 1845, he was received into the Church by Blessed Dominic Barberi. Newman was ordained a priest and in 1848 founded the Oratory at Birmingham (England). In 1879, Pope Leo XIII made him a Cardinal. Cardinal Newman wrote many scholarly books, sermons and poems, and is regarded as a master of English prose style. Perhaps his best known writings are his hymns, Firmly I believe and truly, Praise to the Holiest in the Height, and Lead Kindly Light. Cardinal Newman had a devotion
to Our Lady and, basing himself on the teachings of the early Church, wrote of her as the
new Eve. One of his favourite devotions was the Rosary. Why is she so called?--she who never had any blow, or wound, or other injury to her consecrated person. How can she be exalted over those whose bodies suffered the most ruthless violences and the keenest torments for our Lord's sake? She is, indeed, Queen of all Saints, of those who "walk with Christ in white, for they are worthy"; but how of those "who were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held"? To answer this question, it must be recollected that the pains of the soul may be as fierce as those of the body. Bad men who are now in hell, and the elect of God who are in purgatory, are suffering only in their souls, for their bodies are still in the dust; yet how severe is that suffering! And perhaps most people who have lived long can bear witness in their own persons to a sharpness of distress which was like a sword cutting them, to a weight and force of sorrow which seemed to throw them down, though bodily pain there was none. What an overwhelming horror it must have been for the Blessed Mary to witness the Passion and the Crucifixion of her Son! Her anguish was, as Holy Simeon had announced to her, at the time of that Son's Presentation in the Temple, a sword piercing her soul. If our Lord Him self could not bear the prospect of what was, before Him, and was covered in the thought of it with a bloody sweat, His soul thus acting upon His body, does not this show how great mental pain can be? and would it have been wonderful though Mary's head and heart had given way as she stood under His Cross? Thus is she most truly the Queen of Martyrs. |