Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C (2025) - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

When he was received into the Catholic Church, John Henry Newman had an uncertain future.  For twenty years he had been an Anglican minister, and for much of that was based at Oxford’s University Church.  Through a tumultuous time for the Church of England, St Mary the Virgin’s had provided Newman with a Christian community and a living.  To be received into the Catholic Church, he had to give it all up: estranged from family and friends, deprived of livelihood, Newman went out on a limb for the truth.

There was certainly no fear or bitterness in Newman as he made the change.  The last sermon he gave as an Anglican was a tribute to his little monastic community.  With all peaceableness he told them: “We have no pain, no grief … It was a glad time when we first met here.”  Referring to himself, he said: “Should you know anyone who … has made you feel that there was a higher life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see … remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and pray for him.”

Then, Newman went on towards the Catholic Church, which he lauded as “Mother of saints!  School of the wise!  Nurse of the heroic!”  Soon after his reception, he left Littlemore for the seminary in Birmingham to see the Bishop.  A little later, he visited Rome to be ordained a Catholic priest and receive a doctorate.  Joining the Oratorians, he settled eventually in Birmingham.  There he prayed and wrote away his last years in seclusion, only interrupted really by four years in Ireland and another visit to Rome to be made a cardinal.

St John Henry Newman will soon be made a Doctor of the Church, which means that his teaching is recognised as having been deeply formative for the entire Church.  As the day approaches, much will be said (and misunderstood) about Newman’s teaching on conscience, the development of doctrine, and our sensus fidei – our supernatural sense to evaluate together the correctness of what we see, hear, and do.  All the good that Newman did and wrote thankfully begins with his admirable humility: he was ready to forgo all his comforts to participate in the truth.

On humility, Newman has much to share with us.  From the depths of his own practice of humility, Newman offers that humility begins not with low self-opinion or a peculiar desire to punish oneself, but with greatness.  For Newman and for us, humility and greatness go together.

“[God],” Newman exclaims, “is one; he has no rival; he has no equal; he is unlike anything else; he is sovereign; he can do what he will. He is unchangeable from first to last; he is all-perfect; he is infinite in his power and in his wisdom.”  This is God, who chose to create mere creatures who would so ungraciously rebel against their maker: “[God] has willed, after an eternity of peace, to allow of everlasting anarchy.”  At some point in life, the truly wise person humbly recognises that they have come into existence because of a wise Creator.

But contemplating God’s greatness could lead to a temptation.  One might say in Newman’s words: “He is so far above us that the thought of him does but frighten me; I cannot believe that he cares for me … How am I to believe that he gives to me personally a thought, and cares for me for my own sake?  I am beneath his love.”  It’s a common enough complaint, that God invisible and all-powerful is largely indifferent to the course of my daily life.  There is, strange to say, a lack of humility on our part here.  If I think God is incapable of loving me, in my confident view of him and myself, I have imposed on God a remoteness which isn’t there.  For Newman, even the very existence of creation is the first sign of his interest in us: “Nothing touches him, though he touches all things.”  God only becomes distant from those who make themselves so.

After considering God’s greatness and his closeness to us, Newman would then have us think on his incarnation.  We can learn much from the Son’s birth as man.  God greatness is not threatened by the need, our need, for his humility.  Newman says: “Though he is infinite, [God] can bow himself to the finite.”  But it is not simply the incarnation itself which is to be in our minds; it is its purpose.

Newman redirects: “You say that God and man never can be one, that man cannot bear the sight and touch of his Creator, nor the Creator condescend to the feebleness of the creature; but blush and be confounded to hear, O peevish, restless hearts, that he has come down from his high throne and humbled himself to the creature, in order that the creature might be inspired and strengthened to rise to him.”  God, the great and the devoted, humbled himself precisely so that we would raise our minds to him and be saved.  Newman puts it this way: on the eve of the incarnation, as it were, “[God] is coming to take you captive by a manifestation, which is both intelligible to you and a pledge that he loves you one by one, [so] raise high your expectations, for surely they cannot suffer disappointment.”

Doctor Newman prescribes humility for us by recognising our own greatness.  We were not made for the gutter but for glory; that is why we can be humble.  We recognise that our greatness is unchanged, no matter what it is that we have to give up, give away, or give in to.  But it’s not just our greatness which we take from God; we take his presence too.  There is no depth of humility we may go to that the Son of God has not already been through and surpassed.  God is at hand to make much of all that I am.  He has given me the example of his Son, who was born at Bethlehem and who carried the Cross.  Thus, I discover myself to have been placed above God on earth; he has displaced me as the lowliest of all and taken that place for himself.

Thus, Newman urges: “Leave, then, the prison of your own reasonings.”  Can I, with all my powers and talents, strength and gifts, be humble enough to receive what God longs to give me?  Though the immediate future may be uncertain, the great power and devoted providence of God are at hand as we take the next step.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP is the Parish Priest of Camberwell East, Victoria.