Newman Beatified

The choir have just finished the Introit; now the Pope is about to begin Mass, once the welcoming words of Archbishop Bernard of Birmingham (in a reflective light tenor voice) are done.

The Penitential Rite now – the Confiteor and Misereatur.  The Kyrie starts...

After the Kyrie, the Rite of Beatification: the Archbishop will petition the Pope to beatify Newman; the Vice-Postulator will read a short biography of him; the Holy Father will then beatify him by his apostolic authority, appointing his feast day to be the 9th of October, the anniversary of his conversion in 1845; an image and relics of Newman will be placed beside the altar; the people will sing "Praise to the Holiest in the height" in acclamation; the Archbishop thank him again; and then all will sing Gloria in excelsis Deo, giving thanks to God Who made John Henry a model of Christian grace.

Only a few minutes to go!

******

Other beati in Newman's life: Bl Dominic of the Mother of God, who received him into the Church; Bl Pius IX, who encouraged him to be a priest and found the Oratory in England.

It is done!

BLESSED JOHN HENRY NEWMAN — PRAY FOR US!

The Dream of Gerontius and the Ordo Commendationis Animæ

These extracts from the first section of Newman's The Dream of Gerontius are very close paraphrases of the various prayers of the Ordo Commendationis Animæ (which Newman daily prayed for his own soul, that it find mercy in the day of the Lord); the short aspirations uttered by the dying Gerontius, the Litanies and the Suscipe Domine of the assistants, and the Proficiscere of the priest (but strangely, the last, though almost word-for-word, omits the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph):

Gerontius:

JESU, MARIA—

...

(Jesu, have mercy! Mary, pray for me!)

...

(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity!)    

...

(Lover of souls! great God! I look to Thee,)

....

(Help, loving Lord! Thou my sole Refuge, Thou,)

...

Assistants:

Kyrie eleïson, Christe eleïson, Kyrie eleïson.

Holy Mary, pray for him.

All holy Angels, pray for him.

Choirs of the righteous, pray for him.

Holy Abraham, pray for him.

St. John Baptist, St. Joseph, pray for him.

St. Peter, St. Paul, St Andrew, St. John,

All Apostles, all Evangelists, pray for him.

All holy Disciples of the Lord, pray for him.

All holy Innocents, pray for him.

All holy Martyrs, all holy Confessors,

All holy Hermits, all holy Virgins,

...

Be merciful, be gracious; spare him, Lord.

Be merciful, be gracious; Lord, deliver him.

From the sins that are past;

   From Thy frown and Thine ire;

     From the perils of dying;

     From any complying

     With sin, or denying

     His God, or relying

On self, at the last;

   From the nethermost fire;

From all that is evil;

From power of the devil;

Thy servant deliver,

For once and for ever.

By Thy birth, and by Thy Cross,

Rescue him from endless loss;

By Thy death and burial,

Save him from a final fall;

By Thy rising from the tomb,

   By Thy mounting up above,

   By the Spirit's gracious love,

Save him in the day of doom.

...

Gerontius:

O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!

Some Angel, Jesu! such as came to Thee

In Thine own agony …

Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary,

pray for me.

Assistants:

Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour,

As of old so many by Thy gracious power:—

          (Amen.)

Enoch and Elias from the common doom; (Amen.)

Noe from the waters in a saving home; (Amen.)

Abraham from th' abounding guilt of Heathenesse;

          (Amen.)

Job from all his multiform and fell distress;

          (Amen.)

Isaac, when his father's knife was raised to slay;

          (Amen.)

Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment-day;

          (Amen.)

Moses from the land of bondage and despair;

          (Amen.)

Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair;

          (Amen.)

And the Children Three amid the furnace-flame;

          (Amen.)

Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame;

          (Amen.)

David from Golia and the wrath of Saul;

          (Amen.)

And the two Apostles from their prison-thrall;

          (Amen.)

Thecla from her torments; (Amen:)

                               —so to show Thy power,

Rescue this Thy servant in his evil hour.

Gerontius:

... Into Thy hands,

O Lord, into Thy hands ...

The Priest:

Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!

Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!

Go from this world! Go, in the Name of God

The Omnipotent Father, who created thee!

Go, in the Name of Jesus Christ, our Lord,

Son of the living God, who bled for thee!

Go, in the Name of the Holy Spirit, who

Hath been pour'd out on thee! Go, in the name

Of Angels and Archangels; in the name

Of Thrones and Dominations; in the name

Of Princedoms and of Powers; and in the name

Of Cherubim and Seraphim, go forth!

Go, in the name of Patriarchs and Prophets;

And of Apostles and Evangelists,

Of Martyrs and Confessors; in the name

Of holy Monks and Hermits; in the name

Of Holy Virgins; and all Saints of God,

Both men and women, go! Go on thy course;

And may thy place today be found in peace,

And may thy dwelling be the Holy Mount

Of Sion:—through the Same, through Christ, our Lord.

Newman Sunday

According to my trusty companion to the altar (Juergens, My Daily Missal, 1963), this is the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, ... apparently the parish was keeping, not so much the relevant Sunday in Ordinary Time (I don't know what number, I remain wisely ignorant of that), as the Beatification of John Henry Newman: hooray!

The processional hymn, therefore, was "Firmly I believe and truly", and the recessional, "Praise to the Holiest in the height" – both penned by the Beatus-elect, as part of his great poem The Dream of Gerontius, wherein these stanzas, amongst others, express the faith and trust and hope of the dying "old man" of the title: surely a figure of Everyman.  Likewise, the latter part of the sermon, as also more than a page of the parish bulletin, was all about about-to-be-Blessed John Henry.

Regarding that great poem, it is surely a very deep expression of Newman's profoundly Godward outlook, rightly Oriented toward the true East (as Donne said) – for this was a saint who daily, as well as praying the prayers of preparation for and thanksgiving after Mass in the Breviary or Missal, also recited the prayers for the dying, the Ordo commendationis animæ, which he prayed for his own and all mortal souls: 

• the brief Litanies for the dying – quoted in Newman's Dream of Gerontius;
• the prayer Proficiscere, anima christiana ("Go forth, Christian soul") – versified in Newman's Dream of Gerontius ("Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul");
• the prayer Deus misericors ("Merciful God");
• the prayer Commendo te omnipotenti Deo ("I commend thee to almighty God");
• the prayer Suscipe, Domine, servum tuum ("Receive, Lord, Thy servant"), set out as versicles and responses – versified in Newman's Dream of Gerontius ("Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour");
• the prayer Commendamus tibi ("We commend unto Thee");
• the prayer Delicta juventutis... ne memineris ("Remember not the sins of his youth");
• the prayer Clementissima Virgo ("Most clement Virgin");
• the prayer Ad te confugio sancte Joseph ("To thee I fly, Saint Joseph");
• and also, perhaps, the suggested aspirations in expiratione, at the time of expiring: Jesu, Jesu, Jesu... In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum... Jesu, Maria, Joseph...

The eight long prayers in particular are most worthy meditations for all, the Cardinal evidently believed, as he taught by his own example.

Did he nightly say even the responsory Subvenite, with preces and collect, for his own soul?  A worthy devotion.

How many of us will have the chance of a deathbed as was the ideal of old, with priest and family gathered to pray as we pass on?  Perhaps our best chance is to pray these prayers now.

In particular, I recall the most saluary prayer, the Hail Mary: every time we say it, we supplicate her to "pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death".  A great consolation!

As for "Firmly I believe and truly", here are the seldom-sung first and last, Latin, verses thereof:

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,

De profundis oro te,

Miserere, Judex meus,

Parce mihi, Domine.

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,

De profundis oro te,

Miserere, Judex meus,

Mortis in discrimine.

******

For those curious, I like to read in my Trad. Missal as much of the Proper and Ordinary as possible, while still attending to the Mass going on – so for instance, singing the English paraphrase of the Gloria while reading the Latin, and ditto while saying the Creed.  Some prayers, such as the Domine non sum dignus, I always say in Latin, albeit softly enough for those around not to notice this singularity, I trust.  Using my hand-missal in this way helps me to deal with having perforce to attend the Novus Ordo, when I would far rather go to the Traditional Mass always, but cannot since it is not available here.

Listening to Bruckner in the car to and from Mass also helps – "Locus iste", "Ecce sacerdos magnus", and "Christus factus est", as sung just yester-day at the Pope's Mass in London.

The key to the modern Mass, I find, is attending one offered by a devout priest – some priests by their antics can make it a torture.  Yet, as a friend of mine put it, and he lives in a parish with a vile misbeliever, "Jesus has to come to Mass – so why don't you?".  Too true!  Offering oneself up as a victim soul helps in such circumstances; but when I've had to be at a service that was a congeries of liturgical abuses, I did become horribly upset – I suppose it gives me some tiny inkling of what people suffer when they are the innocent helpless targets of evildoers.

Eve of St Joshua

The first of September is not only the opening of the Byzantine Ecclesiastical Year, but the day whereon my Patron, St Joshua, is celebrated in the Martyrology. As I have a liking for things liturgical, I composed a proper Office for his feast according to the modern Liturgy of the Hours (which I read as a private devotion), but I haven't gotten around to revising this to fit the style of the '62 Breviary.

(My plan would be: to restructure the Hours and the Psalms assigned thereto in a more traditional manner; to have three Matins lessons by dropping the passage from von Speyr and dividing Newman's into two; to reassign the antiphons at Terce, Sext, None and for the Vigil canticles to Lauds and Vespers, so that these have five each; to move the short responsories from Lauds and both Vespers to Terce, Sext, and None; to reuse the versicles at Terce, Sext and None at Lauds and both Vespers; and to delete the intercessions at Lauds and Vespers, as also the Vigil canticles and Gospel. This would produce a "Little Office of St Joshua", since I would only provide three Matins psalms.)

Just to-day, the latest issue of Communio arrived, containing an exegetical article about Moses having Joshua fight Amalec - famously, Moses held his arms out crosswise, a type of the Lord's saving Cross, and so long as he did so, Joshua slew Israel's enemies, a type of how Christians fight the spiritual combat by the power of the Cross and it alone. Appropriately enough, the antiphons at first Vespers of St Joshua are from this very passage! I do like to be proven au courant with the latest in orthodox opinion.

I recommend to all the reading of Newman's sermon "Joshua a Type of Christ and His Followers" (preached on the first Sunday after Trinity, 13th June 1841*) for an excellent elucidation of how we are to take the Scripture history of St Joshua as a type of Christ, yes, and also of ourselves, who are Christ's men, Christians, that we apply the lessons of his prototypical, saintly life to our humble lives.

[* Note that, since this was thirty years before the C. of E. revised its Office lectionary in 1871, the psalms and lessons read that day were as follows: at Matins, Psalm 68 (Vulg., 67), Joshua x and St Mark xiii; at the Holy Communion, I John iv, 7-21 and St Luke xvi, 19-31 (Dives and Lazarus); and at Evensong, Psalms 69 & 70 (Vulg. 68 & 69), Joshua xxiii and II Cor. x. This explains some of Newman's allusions.]

No Green Was Seen

Another liturgical year has begun, with one of the earliest Septuagesimas for nearly a century. Yes, odd as it may seem, according to Pius Parsch the Church's year of grace can be interpreted as beginning at Septuagesima, when the Breviary begins from the beginning, with the first part of the first chapter of Genesis (i, 1-26): In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram...

According to his interpretation, all of "salvation history"prior to Christ is recapitulated during Septuagestimatide and Lent, and then comes our Passover, Christ Himself, and His grace shed abroad during Paschaltide; the time after Pentecost corresponds with the current age of the world, and Advent represents the coming of Christ, consummated at Christmas and Epiphany with the triumphant manifestation of Christ as God-and-Man, Head and members united, reigning for ever without end.

Whatever of this (and it has much to recommend it), because of the extreme earliness of Easter this year there have been no ordinary Sundays after Epiphany, and green has not been seen, at least at St John's Pro-Cathedral: Fr Rowe loathes ferias, and will always celebrate a Mass in white or red instead, in honour of some saint.

This fine morning, since significant numbers of people are still away on holidays during lazy January, I ended up being the choir (with the admirable assistance of a fellow parishioner, shanghaied at short notice) - else there would have been no Missa cantata, perish the thought. The Proper I psalm-toned using Rossini's book, alone!, and this went alright [the Introit was maybe a little shaky, but given the text Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis, that's somehow appropriate]; the Gregorian Asperges, Missa de Angelis [whose parts I may have intoned a bit too low, since I'm most comfortable in the bass register; and something went wrong with the intonation of the Sanctus, mea culpa], and Credo III all rang out from many voices, as did the Ave maris stella at the Offertory; I sang the Jesu dulcis memoria during communion. Before and after Mass we sang "Holy God we praise Thy Name" and "To the Name that brings salvation", it being still January, the month of the Holy Name.

I was struck by the Epistle, St Paul to the Corinthians (I Cor. ix, 27 - x, 5): the mention of many running the race, but only one winning the crown (ix, 24), the necessity of going into training (cf. ix, 25-27) - literally, ascesis - and the bestowal on the faithful of the saving sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist as foreshadowed by the events of Exodus (x, 1-4), yet the awful words "with most of them God was not well pleased" (x, 5), which ties in only too well with the last verse of today's Gospel of the labourers in the vineyard (S. Matthew xx, 1-16) that the last shall be first, the first last, and again, many are called, few chosen (S. Matt. xx, 16; see Newman's sermon thereon), all reminded me of Newman's other terrible statement, that there are many now growing in holiness and grace who shall NOT be saved at the last.


At least, thank God, I made a quick confession before Mass, but I fear my heart is still very divided and wayward.


Postscript: reading the introduction to Butler's Lives of the Saints this evening, giving an account of the Rev. Alban Butler himself, I note how far I am from the standard of Christian perfection our forefathers held; God grant I have the time to improve myself by his grace, that I may live according to the precepts of the Gospel and so be found a true, not a pretended Christian.