Thursday, March 30, 2006

On March 30, 1851...
Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., preached a sermon, of which the following notes survive:
On Bearing Mockery

1. INTROD.—Laetare Sunday. Joy, like a flower springing out of desolation and mortification, as Christ goes along the desert.

2. What flower shall be our offering? We cannot do much in the way of fasting, or other bodily mortifications. Why, the time supplies one, and which the epistle suggests, viz. our bearing reviling, etc. On the epistle of the day—Hagar and Sarah. It was a strong boy bullying a small child—cowardly and ungenerous. This animal nature. (Describe Ishmael.) Sarah childless till Isaac. Laetare—the mocking. 'Even so it is now,' says St. Paul. It is the mark of the true Church, and the form of its warfare—mockery. And so it is at this minute.

3. The scoffings, etc., which surround us not exactly violence or suffering, but slander, etc. The huge Protestantism of this land cannot keep from grinning, scoffing, etc.

4. Now this has ever been the case with the Church, as I have said, e.g. Isaac.

5. Joseph, Job, David, Jeremias, Daniel.—Heb. xi. 36.

6. Our Lord—(particulars)—bowing the knee, etc. Christ's sensitiveness.

7. Something very irritating in mockery, irony, etc. Indignation and anger natural, and not sinful, yet to be restrained lest they become sinful. Slander, misrepresentation, abuse of the good, blasphemy of things sacred, ludicrous views, pictures, etc. Nay, the people who throng the doors of a chapel like this, with persons going to and fro, and insult them.

8. All painful, yet laetare. Rejoice in your desolation; let it be your Lent. Rejoice and leap for joy, for great is your reward in heaven.

9. Rejoice if you are made like Christ and His saints.

10. Rejoice, for it is a proof of your real strength. Quare fremuerunt gentes. Our Lord's whisper terrifies this great country. His vicar, a feeble old man, by a bit of paper frightens it—vox Domini super aquas. Can Wesleyans, etc., do so? When did Protestantism ever raise a whole state as a small act of the vicar of Christ has done? You see how the devils fear. Tall Ishmael is mocking in our streets; a strong boy beating a small one.

11. Rejoice, for it is an augury for the future. The desolate has many more children than she that has a husband. So Protestantism is married to the state. Rejoice not against me, O my enemy, etc.


(When this sermon was preached, there was a large outburst of anti-Catholic activity going on in England. Pope Pius IX had given England a hierarchy of bishops, which act many Protestants saw as 'papal agression'. )
The Feast of St. John Climacus, Abbot
is today. There is information on him here.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

The Catholic Carnival
is up.
The Feast of Pope St. Sixtus III
is today. There is information on him here.
It is also the feast of St. Tutilo, O.S.B..

Monday, March 27, 2006

A big thank-you...
to Penitens for finding this article on a religious community I know. There's a link to their website on the right side of this blog. (My friend Sr. Maria Johanna doesn't seem to be mentioned in the article, but you can't have everything....)
On March 27, 1877...
Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., wrote one of his replies in his lengthy correspondence with an Anglican canon, in which they debated about the "Roman claims". In previous letters, the canon had sent the Venerable a photograph of himself, and had also said that if one has the writings of four or five authors from the early Church, the papal teaching office is rendered unecessary.

My dear Canon Jenkins,
I ought before now to have thanked you for your photograph—which as a work of art is very good, though I did not observe, till your letter pointed out, the fault in the eyes. But I agree with you that photographists visit their unhappy sitters with too fierce a light which makes them frown, or shut their eyes or otherwise distort their features. But your own face shows nothing but patience, or serenity, under the infliction. It is young too for the age you tell me.

I am quite ready to take your quartett or quintett. Do you really think Celestine, Nestorius, Cyril, and John of Antioch would have been a possible court of final appeal? No more than the Kilkenny cats.
Yours most truly,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
The Feast of St. John Damascene, Priest and Doctor of the Church
is today. There is information on him here.