Deus, qui beátum Ioánnem Henrícum, presbýterum,
lumen benígnum tuum sequéntem
pacem in Ecclésia tua inveníre contulísti,
concéde propítius,
ut, eius intercessióne et exémplo,
ex umbris et imagínibus
in plenitúdinem veritátis tuae perducámur.
O God, who bestowed on the Priest Blessed John
Henry Newman
the grace to follow your kindly light and find
peace in your Church;
graciously grant that, through his intercession
and example,
we may be led out of shadows and images
into the fulness of your truth.
Salve
Fundator, Pater et Magister!
Salve
Iohannes! magnum qui beati
Cor et
Philippi Anglis ostendisti
Primus, et
mentem.
Hail, Founder, Father and Master! Hail John, who
were the first to show the great Heart of blessed Philip to the English, and
St. Philip’s mind.
Salve! Te duxit Dei lux benigna
Ex tenebrarum umbris et errore
Ducemque fecit civibus permultis
Ad veritatem.
Hail! God’s kindly light guided you from the
shadows and error of darkness and made you the guide to truth for many of your
countrymen.
Salve! Qui dogma datum Christianis
Inter doctores doctior et ipse
Traditum semper integrumque sensu
Pandis eodem.
Hail! Among teachers yourself more learned, you
reveal that the teaching given to Christians is ever handed on whole and in the
same sense.
Salve! Cui custos unius ovili
Apostolorum fidei concessit
Pignus et signum roseum galerum
Martyriique.
Hail! To whom the guardian of the one sheepfold
granted the blood-red hat, sign and pledge of Apostolic Faith and of martyrdom.
Salve Fundator! Nobis intercessor
Sis ad aeternam Triadem, precamur,
Cuncta cui dignas resonent per orbem
Saecula laudes. Amen.
Hail, Founder! We pray that you be our intercessor
with the eternal Trinity, to Whom may all the ages sound worthy praises
throughout the world. Amen.
Author: Fr.John Hunwicke, The Ordinariate of Our
Lady of Walsingham.
OFFICE OF READINGS
SECOND READING
From the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman,
Priest
(Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V: Position of My
Mind since 1845, London 1864, pp. 238-239, 250-251)
It was like coming into port after a rough sea.
From the time that I became a Catholic, of course
I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this,
I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up
thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record,
and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and
contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my
conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not
conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more
self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a
rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without
interruption.
Nor had I any trouble about receiving those
additional articles, which are not found in the Anglican Creed. Some of them I
believed already, but not any one of them was a trial to me. I made a
profession of them upon my reception with the greatest ease, and I have the
same ease in believing them now. I am far of course from denying that every
article of the Christian Creed, whether as held by Catholics or by Protestants,
is beset with intellectual difficulties; and it is simple fact, that, for
myself, I cannot answer those difficulties. Many persons are very sensitive of
the difficulties of Religion; I am as sensitive of them as any one; but I have
never been able to see a connexion between apprehending those difficulties,
however keenly, and multiplying them to any extent, and on the other hand
doubting the doctrines to which they are attached. Ten thousand difficulties do
not make one doubt, as I understand the subject; difficulty and doubt are
incommensurate. There of course may be difficulties in the evidence; but I am
speaking of difficulties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves, or to their
relations with each other. A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a
mathematical problem, of which the answer is or is not given to him, without
doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a certain particular answer is
the true one. Of all points of faith, the being of a God is, to my own
apprehension, encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon our minds
with most power.
People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation
is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic.
I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic
Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to
be part of the original revelation. It is difficult, impossible, to imagine, I
grant;–but how is it difficult to believe? …
I believe the whole revealed dogma as taught by
the Apostles, as committed by the Apostles to the Church, and as declared by
the Church to me. I receive it, as it is infallibly interpreted by the
authority to whom it is thus committed, and (implicitly) as it shall be, in
like manner, further interpreted by that same authority till the end of time. I
submit, moreover, to the universally received traditions of the Church, in
which lies the matter of those new dogmatic definitions which are from time to
time made, and which in all times are the clothing and the illustration of the
Catholic dogma as already defined. And I submit myself to those other decisions
of the Holy See, theological or not, through the organs which it has itself
appointed, which, waiving the question of their infallibility, on the lowest
ground come to me with a claim to be accepted and obeyed. Also, I consider
that, gradually and in the course of ages, Catholic inquiry has taken certain
definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a
method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great
minds, such as St Athanasius, St Augustine, and St Thomas; and I feel no
temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed
to us for these latter days.
