Cardinal Newman’s motto, cor ad cor loquitur, or “Heart speaks unto heart”, gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he wrote in one of his many fine sermons, “A habit of prayer, the practice of turning to God and the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every emergency ”“ prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural effect in spiritualising and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before; gradually”¦ he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh principles” (Parochial and Plain Sermons, iv, 230-231). Today’s Gospel tells us that no one can be the servant of two masters (cf Lk 16:13), and Blessed John Henry’s teaching on prayer explains how the faithful Christian is definitely taken into the service of the one true Master, who alone has a claim to our unconditional devotion (cf Mt 23:10). Newman helps us to understand what this means for our daily lives: he tells us that our divine Master has assigned a specific task to each one of us, a “definite service”, committed uniquely to every single person: “I have my mission,” he wrote, “I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place”¦ if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling” (Meditations and Devotions, 301-2).
The definite service to which Blessed John Henry was called involved applying his keen intellect and his prolific pen to many of the most pressing “subjects of the day”. His insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilised society, and into the need for a broadly based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world.
A few have written me asking why I am using the Catholic Herald for the texts of many of the Pope’s addresses–the simple answer is that they have them out first or soonest most often.
This text is not yet on the official Vatican website as of now (I just rechecked).
As Riazat Butt of the Guardian put it– “As another colleague, the Telegraph’s Martin Beckford remarked on Twitter yesterday, the Catholic Herald is doing a better job of getting the information out there than the church or government media team.”