Happy Columbus Day weekend.
Columbus was a 15th century navigator. He left Europe and found America with no GPS, no newfangled applications. Imagine!!!
In today's high-tech world. I read about a contractor who renovated a church at no charge, on one condition: that the pastor never intrude until it was done. The pastor was then astounded to see only one pew. But when people filled it, another appeared electronically, and another as needed. No empty seats!
The pastor went to the pulpit and began to practice his homily. Some eight minutes later, he suddenly disappeared beneath the floor. He emerged and asked what happened. The contractor explained, “A trap door opens after eight minutes. Enough is enough.” A lesson for preachers.
The word of God takes us back to the ninth century before Jesus. A Syrian army general begs the prophet Elisha to heal his skin disease. Elisha simply suggests that he bathe in the Jordan River. The Syrian does so, is cured, and praises the God of Israel. This passage invites us to praise God for who he is, our all-good Creator, and to thank God for the many blessings he bestows upon us.
St. Paul, in his letter to Timothy, speaks of the hardships he has endured for the Gospel. He fearlessly preaches Jesus Christ, once crucified and now gloriously alive. Paul invites us to give thanks for the gift of God’s life, bestowed upon us in the waters of baptism, nurtured in this liturgy, and ours forever in a transformed heavenly life.
In the Gospel, Jesus heals ten people of leprosy. But only one, a foreigner, returns to give thanks to God.
I would like to speak about a person who was grateful to God for the many blessings God bestowed upon him, especially the gift of faith: John Henry Newman, whose feast day we celebrate today, October 9.
This nineteenth century Englishman spent half of his life as an Anglican and the second half as a Roman Catholic. Newman entered Oxford University at age fifteen, and eventually served as vicar of the university church for seventeen years. He published eight volumes of sermons, a study in Christian spirituality.
The high point was his influential role in the Oxford movement, an effort to return to the sources of our faith--the Bible, the sacraments, belief statements, authority in the Church and apostolic succession. Newman's research eventually convinced him that Rome was the home of the true Church of Christ.
In 1845, he was received into the Catholic Church. Two years later he was ordained a priest. He founded Oratory houses in Birmingham and London and then served as rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, which inspired his landmark book The Idea of a University.
Newman wrote 40 books and 21,000 letters that survive. Most well known are his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (A Defense of His Life), his spiritual autobiography, and his classic Essay on The Development of Christian Doctrine, describing the continuity between what was revealed and believed in first century Christianity and what is believed now.
The fullness of revelation resides in the person of Jesus Christ. Belief statements try to capture, but never fully, the inexhaustible reality of the God-man. Hence, Christianity must develop, just as we grow to adulthood. And there must be an authority on the truth or falsity of such developments.
Newman was a supporter of Christian unity at a time when religious bigotry was commonplace. He was a pioneer in emphasizing the active role of the laity: the “Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple.”
Newman's writings reflect the spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The Church is always reform-able, holy yet made up of sinners. Revelation is a person: Jesus Christ. God reveals himself to us in Jesus, and we describe this revelation in belief statements, e. g. the Nicene creed. The Eucharist is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed” and “the font from which all power or grace flows.” In the Eucharist we encounter Jesus Christ gloriously alive. From this powerful font we go forth to serve the Lord in our everyday lives.
I highlight very briefly an awesome prayer that holds one of my favorite images of God: light. Newman’s poem “The Pillar of the Cloud,” written while he recovered from a severe illness, was made a hymn. Here is a very recognizable verse, and many victims of Hurricane Ian may pray it:
“Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet;
I do not ask to see the distant scene;
one step enough for me..
So long Your power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on” into God's eternal light."
May the light of Jesus Christ lead us on...into our heavenly dwelling place. Amen!
