John Henry Newman: The Spirit of God Makes Christ Present with Us by Making Us Present with Christ Sunday, May 20 2012

You will say, How can He [the ascended Jesus] be present to the Christian and in the Church, yet not be on earth, but on the right hand of God?

I answer, that the Christian Church is made up of faithful souls, and how can any of us say where the soul is, simply and really?

The soul indeed acts through the body, and perceives through the body; but where is it? Or what has it to do with place?

Or why should it be a thing incredible that the power of the Spirit should so visit the soul as to open upon it a Divine manifestation, which yet it perceives not, because its present perceptions are only through the body?

Who shall limit the power of the gracious Spirit of God? How know we, for instance, but that He makes Christ present with us, by making us present with Christ?

As the earth goes round the sun, yet the sun is said to move, so our souls, in fact, may be taken up to Christ, when He is said to come to us.

But no need to insist on one mode in which the mystery may be conceived, when ten thousand ways are possible with God, of which we know nothing.

Scripture says enough to show us that influences may be exerted upon the soul so marvellous, that we cannot decide whether the soul remains in the body or not, while subjected to them.

St. Paul, speaking of himself, says, “Whether in the body, I cannot tell, or whether out of the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth: … caught up to the third heaven.”

And he repeats his statement: “I knew such a man,” meaning himself, “whether in the body I cannot tell, or out of the body I cannot tell, God knoweth: how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

St. Paul was brought into Paradise, yet his body remained where it was; and whether his soul was separated from it, was a question which he could not decide.

How can we pretend to decide what the Holy Spirit may or may not do towards faithful souls now, and whether He does not manifest Christ to and in them, by bringing them to Christ?

Again; consider Satan’s power in showing our Lord all the kingdoms of the world “in a moment of time;” may not the Almighty Spirit much more do with us, what the evil one did with our Lord?

May He not in less than a moment bring our souls into God’s presence, while our bodies are on earth?

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6,Sermon 10. The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church.

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John Henry Newman: The Cross of Christ So Wounds As to Heal Also Saturday, Apr 7 2012

[Following on from here...]

It must not be supposed, because the doctrine of the Cross makes us sad, that therefore the Gospel is a sad religion.

The Psalmist says, “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy;” and our Lord says, “They that mourn shall be comforted.”

Let no one go away with the impression that the Gospel makes us take a gloomy view of the world and of life.

It hinders us indeed from taking a superficial view, and finding a vain transitory joy in what we see.

But it forbids our immediate enjoyment, only to grant enjoyment in truth and fulness afterwards.

It only forbids us to begin with enjoyment. It only says, If you begin with pleasure, you will end with pain.

It bids us begin with the Cross of Christ, and in that Cross we shall at first find sorrow, but in a while peace and comfort will rise out of that sorrow.

That Cross will lead us to mourning, repentance, humiliation, prayer, fasting; we shall sorrow for our sins, we shall sorrow with Christ’s sufferings.

But all this sorrow will only issue, nay, will be undergone in a happiness far greater than the enjoyment which the world gives,

—though careless worldly minds indeed will not believe this, ridicule the notion of it, because they never have tasted it, and consider it a mere matter of words, which religious persons think it decent and proper to use, and try to believe themselves, and to get others to believe, but which no one really feels.

This is what they think; but our Saviour said to His disciples, “Ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”

“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”

And St. Paul says, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”

And thus the Cross of Christ, as telling us of our redemption as well as of His sufferings, wounds us indeed, but so wounds as to heal also.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6, Sermon 7. The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World.

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John Henry Newman: The Creator Spirit Changes the Self-Satisfied Pharisee into the Broken-Hearted Publican Monday, Feb 20 2012

It is the ignorance of our understanding, it is our spiritual blindness, it is our banishment from the presence of Him who is the source and the standard of all Truth, which is the cause of this meagre, heartless religion of which men are commonly so proud.

Had we any proper insight into things as they are, had we any real apprehension of God as He is, of ourselves as we are, we should never dare to serve Him without fear, or to rejoice unto Him without trembling.

And it is the removal of this veil which is spread between our eyes and heaven, it is the pouring in upon the soul of the illuminating grace of the New Covenant, which makes the religion of the Christian so different from that of the various human rites and philosophies, which are spread over the earth.

[...] That awful Creator Spirit, of whom the Epistle of this day speaks so much, He it is who brings into religion the true devotion, the true worship, and changes the self-satisfied Pharisee into the broken-hearted, self-abased Publican.

It is the sight of God, revealed to the eye of faith, that makes us hideous to ourselves, from the contrast which we find ourselves to present to that great God at whom we look.

It is the vision of Him in His infinite gloriousness, the All-holy, the All-beautiful, the All-perfect, which makes us sink into the earth with self-contempt and self-abhorrence.

We are contented with ourselves till we contemplate Him. Why is it, I say, that the moral code of the world is so precise and well-defined? Why is the worship of reason so calm?

Why was the religion of classic heathenism so joyous? Why is the framework of civilized society all so graceful and so correct?

Why, on the other hand, is there so much of emotion, so much of conflicting and alternating feeling, so much that is high, so much that is abased, in the devotion of Christianity?

It is because the Christian, and the Christian alone, has a revelation of God; it is because he has upon his mind, in his heart, on his conscience, the idea of one who is Self-dependent, who is from Everlasting, who is Incommunicable.

He knows that One alone is holy, and that His own creatures are so frail in comparison of Him, that they would dwindle and melt away in His presence, did He not uphold them by His power.

[...] He knows that there is just One Being, in whose hand lies his own happiness, his own sanctity, his own life, and hope, and salvation.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Sermons Preached on Various Occasions 2: The Religion of the Pharisee, the Religion of Mankind.

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John Henry Newman: “Blessed are they that Do His Commandments, that they may have Right to the Tree of Life” Thursday, Oct 20 2011

(On 2 Kings 22:19-20.)

In conclusion, my brethren, I would have you observe in what Josiah’s chief excellence lay.

This is the character given him when his name is first mentioned; “He did … right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.” (2 Kings 22:2).

[...] Now what is this strict virtue called? it is called faith. It is no matter whether we call it faith or conscientiousness, they are in substance one and the same:

where there is faith, there is conscientiousness—where there is conscientiousness, there is faith; they may be distinguished from each other in words, but they are not divided in fact.

They belong to one, and but one, habit of mind—dutifulness; they show themselves in obedience, in the careful, anxious observance of God’s will, however we learn it.

Hence it is that St. Paul tells us that “the just shall live by faith” under every dispensation of God’s mercy.

And this is called faith, because it implies a reliance on the mere word of the unseen God overpowering the temptations of sight.

Whether it be we read and accept His word in Scripture (as Christians do), or His word in our conscience, the law written on the heart (as is the case with heathens); in either ease, it is by following it, in spite of the seductions of the world around us, that we please God.

St. Paul calls it faith; saying after the prophet, “The just shall live by faith”;

and St. Peter, in the tenth chapter of the Acts, calls it “fearing and working righteousness,” where he says, that “in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.”

It is all one: both Apostles say that God loves those who prefer Him to the world; whose character and frame of mind is such.

Elsewhere St. Paul also speaks like St. Peter, when he declares that God will render eternal life to them, who by “patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory” (Rom. 2:7).

St. John adds his testimony: “Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.” (1 John 3:7).

And our Saviour’s last words at the end of the whole Scripture, long after the coming of the Spirit, after the death of all the Apostles but St. John, are the same: “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” (Rev. 22:14).

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8,  Sermon 7. Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant. 

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John Henry Newman: The Prophet Elisha and the Comfortable Christian Doctrine of the Communion of Saints Monday, Aug 8 2011

Next I observe on the especial communion, or (as I may call it) citizenship, which Elisha enjoyed with the unseen world.

Elijah thought himself solitary, though he was not so; the world invisible was hid from him.

Though ministered to by Angels, though sustained miraculously by Almighty God, yet, like St. John Baptist, when he sent to ask Christ, Art Thou He that should come? he seemed to himself one against many.

But Elisha had the privilege of knowing that he was one of a great host who were fighting the Lord’s battles, though he might be solitary on earth.

To him was revealed in its measure the comfortable Christian doctrine of the Communion of Saints. His eyes were purged to see sights which the world could not see….

Hear Elijah’s words—I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away (1 Kings 19:10).

On the other hand, when Elisha’s servant, on finding the host of the Syrians round about them, said to the Prophet, Alas! my master, how shall we do? Elisha answered, Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them (2 Kings 6:15-17).

And then he besought Almighty God to give to his servant for an instant a glimpse of that glorious vision which he in faith, or by inspiration, enjoyed continually.

He prayed, and said, Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

How well does this vision correspond to that blessed privilege which, as the Apostle assures us, is conferred upon us Christians:

Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,

and to an innumerable company of Angels, to the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all,

and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant,

and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel!

An innumerable company of Angels, and the Spirits of the just;—we dwell under their shadow; we are baptized into their fellowship; we are allotted their guardianship; we are remembered, as we trust, in their prayers.

We dwell in the very presence and court of God Himself, and of His Eternal Son our Saviour, who died for us, and rose again, and now intercedes for us before the Throne.

We have privileges surely far greater than Elisha’s; but of the same kind.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Sermons on Subjects of the Day, Sermon 13. Elijah a Type of Christ and His Followers.

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John Henry Newman: Through the Holy Spirit We Have Communion with Father and Son Friday, Jun 10 2011

Christ really is with us now, whatever be the mode of it.

This He says expressly Himself; “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

He even says, “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.”

And in a passage already quoted more than once, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”

Christ’s presence, then, is promised to us still, though He is on the right hand of the Father.

You will say, “Yes; He is present as God.” Nay, I answer; more than this, He is the Christ, and the Christ is promised, and Christ is man as well as God.

This surely is plain even from the words of the text. He said He was going away. Did He go away as God or as man?

“A little while, and ye shall not see Me;” this was on His death.

He went away as man, He died as man; if, then, He promises to come again, surely He must mean that He would return as man, in the only sense, that is, in which He could return.

As God He is ever present, never was otherwise than present, never went away;

when His body died on the Cross and was buried, when His soul departed to the place of spirits, still He was with His disciples in His Divine ubiquity.

The separation of soul and body could not touch His impassible everlasting Godhead.

When then He says He should go away, and come again and abide for ever, He is speaking, not merely of His omnipresent Divine nature, but of His human nature.

As being Christ, He says that He, the Incarnate Mediator, shall be with His Church for ever.

But again: you may be led to explain His declaration thus; “He has come again, but in His Spirit; that is, His Spirit has come instead of Him; and when it is said that He is with us, this only means that His Spirit is with us.”

No one, doubtless, can deny this most gracious and consolatory truth, that the Holy Ghost is come;

but why has He come? to supply Christ’s absence, or to accomplish His presence?

Surely to make Him present.

Let us not for a moment suppose that God the Holy Ghost comes in such sense that God the Son remains away.

No; He has not so come that Christ does not come, but rather He comes that Christ may come in His coming.

Through the Holy Ghost we have communion with Father and Son.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6, Sermon 10. The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church.

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John Henry Newman: We have Lost Christ and We have Found Him Sunday, Jun 5 2011

He says; I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

And He says shortly before it, It is expedient for you that I go away.

And again: I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more: but ye see Me.

Thus Christ’s going to the Father is at once a source of sorrow, because it involves His absence; and of joy, because it involves His presence.

And out of the doctrine of His resurrection and ascension, spring those Christian paradoxes, often spoken of in Scripture, that we are sorrowing, yet always rejoicing; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.

This, indeed, is our state at present; we have lost Christ and we have found Him; we see Him not, yet we discern Him.

We embrace His feet, yet He says, Touch Me not.

How is this? it is thus: we have lost the sensible and conscious perception of Him;

we cannot look on Him, hear Him, converse with Him, follow Him from place to place;

but we enjoy the spiritual, immaterial, inward, mental, real sight and possession of Him;

a possession more real and more present than that which the Apostles had in the days of His flesh, because it is spiritual, because it is invisible.

We know that the closer any object of this world comes to us, the less we can contemplate it and comprehend it.

Christ has come so close to us in the Christian Church (if I may so speak), that we cannot gaze on Him or discern Him.

He enters into us, He claims and takes possession of His purchased inheritance;

He does not present Himself to us, but He takes us to Him. He makes us His members.

Our faces are, as it were, turned from Him;

we see Him not, and know not of His presence, except by faith, because He is over us and within us.

And thus we may at the same time lament because we are not conscious of His presence, as the Apostles enjoyed it before His death;

and may rejoice because we know we do possess it even more than they, according to the text,

whom having not seen (that is, with the bodily eyes) ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:8-9).

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6, Sermon 10. The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church.

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John Henry Newman: The Great and Awful Doctrine of the Cross of Christ – the Heart of Religion Monday, Apr 18 2011

The doctrine of the Cross, though it be the true interpretation of this world, is not prominently manifested in it, upon its surface, but is concealed;

so again, when received into the faithful heart, there it abides as a living principle, but deep, and hidden from observation.

[...] “Jesus Christ and He crucified” is, as the Apostle tells us, “a hidden wisdom;”—hidden in the world, which seems at first sight to speak a far other doctrine,

—and hidden in the faithful soul, which to persons at a distance, or to chance beholders, seems to be living but an ordinary life, while really it is in secret holding communion with Him who was “manifested in the flesh,” “crucified through weakness,” “justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, and received up into glory.”

This being the case, the great and awful doctrine of the Cross of Christ, which we now commemorate, may fitly be called, in the language of figure, the heart of religion.

The heart may be considered as the seat of life; it is the principle of motion, heat, and activity; from it the blood goes to and fro to the extreme parts of the body.

It sustains the man in his powers and faculties; it enables the brain to think; and when it is touched, man dies.

And in like manner the sacred doctrine of Christ’s Atoning Sacrifice is the vital principle on which the Christian lives, and without which Christianity is not.

Without it no other doctrine is held profitably; to believe in Christ’s divinity, or in His manhood, or in the Holy Trinity, or in a judgment to come, or in the resurrection of the dead, is an untrue belief, not Christian faith, unless we receive also the doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice.

On the other hand, to receive it presupposes the reception of other high truths of the Gospel besides;

it involves the belief in Christ’s true divinity, in His true incarnation, and in man’s sinful state by nature; and it prepares the way to belief in the sacred Eucharistic feast, in which He who was once crucified is ever given to our souls and bodies, verily and indeed, in His Body and in His Blood.

But again, the heart is hidden from view; it is carefully and securely guarded; it is not like the eye set in the forehead, commanding all, and seen of all:

and so in like manner the sacred doctrine of the Atoning Sacrifice is not one to be talked of, but to be lived upon; not to be put forth irreverently, but to be adored secretly….

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 6, Sermon 7. The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World.

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John Henry Newman: Thus Was He Stripped of All Things Wednesday, Apr 13 2011

He took other human friends, when He had given up His Mother—the twelve Apostles—as if He desired that in which He might sympathise.

He chose them, as He says, to be, “not servants but friends.”

He made them His confidants. He told them things which He did not tell others.

It was His will to favour, nay, to indulge them, as a father behaves towards a favourite child.

He made them more blessed than kings and prophets and wise men, from the things He told them.

He called them “His little ones,” and preferred them for His gifts to the wise and prudent.

[...] He rejoiced in their sympathy when His solemn trial was approaching.

He assembled them about Him at the last supper, as if they were to support Him in it.

“With desire,” He says, “have I desired to eat this Pasch with you, before I suffer.”

[...] But it was His adorable will that they too should leave Him, that He should be left to Himself.

One betrayed, another denied Him, the rest ran away from Him, and left Him in the hands of His enemies.

Even after He had risen, none would believe in it.

Thus he trod the winepress alone.

He who was Almighty, and All-blessed, and who flooded His own soul with the full glory of the vision of His Divine Nature, would still subject that soul to all the infirmities which naturally belonged to it;

and, as He suffered it to rejoice in the sympathy, and to be desolate under the absence, of human friends, so, when it pleased Him, He could, and did, deprive it of the light of the presence of God.

This was the last and crowning misery that He put upon it.

He had in the course of His ministry fled from man to God; he had appealed to Him.

He had taken refuge from the rude ingratitude of the race whom He was saving in divine communion.

He retired of nights to pray.

He said, “the Father loveth the Son, and shews to Him all things that He doth Himself.”

He returned thanks to Him for hiding His mysteries from the wise to reveal them to the little ones.

But now He deprived Himself of this elementary consolation, by which He lived, and that, not in part only, but in its fulness.

He said, when His passion began, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death;”

and at the last, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”

Thus He was stripped of all things.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Meditations on Christian Doctrine, 3,2,2,15-16.

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John Henry Newman: A Hand was Lifted up Against the Face of Christ Saturday, Mar 12 2011

A hand was lifted up against the Face of Christ. Whose hand was that?

My conscience tells me: “thou art the man”. I trust it is not so with me now.

But, O my soul, contemplate the awful fact. Fancy Christ before thee, and fancy thyself lifting up thy hand and striking Him!

Thou wilt say, “It is impossible: I could not do so”. Yes, thou hast done so. When thou didst sin wilfully, then thou hast done so.

He is beyond pain now: still thou hast struck Him, and had it been in the days of His flesh, He would have felt pain.

Turn back in memory, and recollect the time, the day, the hour, when by wilful mortal sin, by scoffing at sacred things,

or by profaneness, or by dark hatred of this thy Brother, or by acts of impurity, or by deliberate rejection of God’s voice,

or in any other devilish way known to thee, thou hast struck the All-holy One.

[...] O my God, how can I look Thee in the face when I think of my ingratitude, so deeply seated, so habitual, so immovable—or rather so awfully increasing!

Thou loadest me day by day with Thy favours, and feedest me with Thyself, as Thou didst Judas, yet I not only do not profit thereby, but I do not even make any acknowledgment at the time.

[...] It is the same day after day. When wilt Thou give me a still greater grace than Thou hast given, the grace to profit by the graces which Thou givest?

When wilt Thou give me Thy effectual grace which alone can give life and vigour to this effete, miserable, dying soul of mine?

My God, I know not in what sense I can pain Thee in Thy glorified state; but I know that every fresh sin, every fresh ingratitude I now commit, was among the blows and stripes which once fell on Thee in Thy passion.

O let me have as little share in those Thy past sufferings as possible. Day by day goes, and I find I have been more and more, by the new sins of each day, the cause of them.

[...] Let others wound Thee—let not me. Let not me have to think that Thou wouldest have had this or that pang of soul or body the less, except for me.

O my God, I am so fast in prison that I cannot get out. O Mary, pray for me. O Philip, pray for me, though I do not deserve Thy pity.

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Meditations on Christian Doctrine, 3,2,1,6.

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