Homily for the 18th Sunday of the Year

Newman’s Invisible Path to Eternal Treasure

ST JOHN HENRY SOON TO BE DECLARED A DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH

On the Feast of St Ignatius, a friend of St Philip, and on the eve of a son of St Philip, St Alphonsus Ligouri, the Holy Father cleared all that was necessary to make our own St John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church.

What does this mean for him, for us and how does it relate to the readings of this Sunday?

The First Reading recalls that, despite man’s desire to be constantly busy – as we all are – it all seems to come to nothing in the end. This frequent lament by the author of Ecclesiastes that “all is vanity” appears to be all too depressing. And yet, doesn’t it offer us a special insight into most of our daily chores: what lasting impact do they really have?

It’s illuminated somewhat by St Paul’s instruction to the Colossians: don’t simply pursue the useless, base, earthly things, but rather “look for the things that are in heaven”. In this way, we chase after those enduring, holy ends.

But is there a via media, something in between the dull, earthly, passing pursuits and the pure, good, heavenly and spiritual? To try and understand this link – which Our Lord will do in His perfect teaching in the Gospel – we could to the trusted teachers of our Holy Religion, in whom we find faithful spiritual teaching. These leading lights are called the “Doctors of the Church”. Newman will be named as the 38^th Doctor of the Church, to be numbered among the great teacher-saints of history. Saints Augustine, Athanasius and Gregory the Great are some ancient names; St Thomas Aquinas is a firm favourite of ours; in the modern era; Saints Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila two of the esteemed women in the list. (We’ll return to one more in just a moment.) What characterizes their spiritual teaching? Some were academics and professors; many were pastors, zealous for souls; a few were mystics, wrapped in ecstatic prayer; dying at the age of 24, we could say that one of them – St Therese of Lisieux, whose statue is in our church – was just a child, really. So what makes them great teachers was not so much the quality of their academic achievement; it wasn’t necessary that they all were professors. But they all professed a life-changing love of God, Who is constantly teaching the hearts of the faithful in His Church.

We do well to dwell, for a moment, on St Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, affectionately called “the Little Flower of Jesus”. She was, by own admission, no great intellectual. And yet this didn’t prevent the professor-pope St John Paul II from declaring her one of the Church’s finest teachers. Why? Her spiritual doctrine was so possessed by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. At the risk of summarizing this in a short moment, we could recall her spiritual path – often called the Little Way – in which she saw every moment of human existence as an opportunity to love-to-salvation. “My vocation is to love,” she discovered one day in her prayers. And so she would do all things, even the tiniest of jobs in the Carmel, for love of God and for the salvation of souls. “I will seek out a means of getting to Heaven by a little way… doing the least actions for love… picking up a pin from the floor can save a soul” (Story of a Soul). This small thing – even a pathetic thing – done with love, to save souls, is not a vanity at all, or a base, worldly way of living: it is seeking after the heavenly realities, in which Christ, Who is in all, wills to dwell. She is a profound spiritual teacher.

What will we say about St John Henry Newman. He died at almost ninety; an Oxford graduate and a tutor there, with a reputation for a luminous intellect possibly rivaling that of St Thomas, stimulating great minds like Pope Benedict, he’s seemingly in a different realm to the “Little Flower”. He wrote much more; he was engaged for much longer in the active apostolate, having founded the Oratory in England – a grandfather of our own Congregation here in many ways. How best could we summarise his spiritual doctrine? This is the work of many intellectuals; much ink will be spilled in time.

But Newman, like Therese, knew that seeking God in the everyday is not a vain act, but essential for living a full, meaningful life. God has made us, Newman reflected, “for some definite purpose” (as he tells us in the often-quoted meditation) – I am “as necessary in my place as an archangel is in his”. His sermon “The Invisible World” urges us think that “if we wish to be perfect, we have nothing more to do than to perform the ordinary duties of the day well”. He proposes to us that even though we can’t see this invisible world, to which St Paul urges us to cast our glance, it is truly real, even though humans are often so bound to be caught up in the tangible. We tend, then, to neglect the eternal, invisible, being so caught up the temporal and visible: it is change what is passing into what can be enduring, by an act of consecration. Even those things we suffer in this life take on a more eternal significance, if we so will it – and ask the Lord to will it for us. And if the invisible world – so necessary, so divine – is so real, Newman teaches, we must not fear those moments in this life when we are made invisible, or forgotten, or looked over, knowing that these things attached to Our Blessed Lord also.

This is the same Lord Who is the Doctor of Doctors, Who reveals Himself in seemingly simple parables. It is the source of that teaching that the toil of the day, the scurrying things away for tomorrow, a culture that prioritises eating, drinking and merrymaking is ultimately vain. Without giving the first place to the Lord, Who is our real treasure, the creator and guardian of our soul, it’s all useless – even when it has the visible appearance of muchness. In Him, all of the small things of this world can be reoriented towards a glorious end, becoming moments of grace; suffering and even death take on a mystical and eternal character in the Doctor of Doctors, Who first teaches us the Little Way, the narrow path, the invisible and hidden life. Is it not so apt, in the context of Holy Mass, to meditate about this precisely in connection with the Most Holy Eucharist. To human sight, what occurs on the altar can be so prosaic; but invisibly, the Mystery here is so large, so awesome, so Divine that not even the world is large enough, with all its barns, to contain it – and yet God wills to be contained for us, and by us, in a Host, in the tabernacle, in this church and in human hearts. To pick up a pin, to kneel in adoration, to confess our sins, to receive Him with great love can save our souls, and those of the whole world.

Trusting in the prayers of our great Doctors, and our Oratorian doctor-to-be, let us turn to Our Lady, the Queen of the Doctors, who shows in her own life what it means to be choose the lowly path and to be exalted by the Lord, Who wills by teaching us, loving us and dying for us, to bring us to Heaven, where He, our treasure, is. Amen.

Want to read more? Learn about the Doctors more generally here, or about Newman’s particular case in this short First Things article.