THE
P RTAL
November 2018
Page 10
Thoughts on Newman
Recapitulation
The Revd Dr Stephen Morgan on
Blessed John Henry Newman and the Far East
I
’ve been asked to give you further and better particulars concerning Blessed John Henry Newman’s use
of the expression “Far East”, which I claimed in last month’s article was the first cited use of the expression,
according to the OED. Newman uses the expression in his famous Second Spring sermon, preached to the
assembled English and Welsh Bishops, at Oscott on 13 July 1852, when talking of St Philip Neri blessing the
Catholic Reformation missionaries leaving Rome for England.
Newman’s first thoughts of vocation were to be a
missionary and St Philip had not wanted to stay in
Rome but rather wanted to follow the great Jesuit
missionary, St Francis Xavier, to what Newman called
the Far East. In the Chapel of the Three Kings here at
the Seminary of St Joseph, Macau, we have a relic of St
Francis Xavier: his humerus. It’s here because he died
on an island very nearby and there is a great devotion
to him amongst Chinese Catholics, especially those
in this South East corner of that vast country. Ask his
prayers for the work we do here and for the whole
Church in China at this crucial time.
a quick class break, I found the text, a recording of the
Dream of Gerontius on YouTube (Andrew Davis with
the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in St Paul’s
Cathedral) and a copy of the sheet music.
We spent the rest of the afternoon listening first to
Elgar’s incomparable setting of Newman’s poem and
then learning the hymn – they’d never heard it before.
From the enthusiasm with which they sang it, I infer
that they really liked it very much: that or it was a
blessed relief from my lecture! It probably doesn’t
count as the second miracle towards canonisation but
I think it might be the beginning of a popular cultus
Enough of that: on with the main business. After a for Newman in the Far East! For their assignment, I’ve
happy lunch hour browsing through the online photos asked the students to explain how Newman, Irenaeus
of the meeting of the three Ordinaries at Walsingham and St Paul explain the idea of recapitulation and how
– how I miss that place – I settled in to an afternoon Mary’s Perpetual Virginity is both the expression and
with seven students from Myanmar (what we used to the guarantee of it. I’ll let you know how they do but I
call – and I still do rather too often – Burma), Vietnam can hear one of them humming the tune as I write this.
and East Timor, teaching them about the Virgin The prospects look good.
Motherhood of Our Lady. I was looking with them at
St Paul’s teaching about Jesus as the New Adam and
The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham
how St Irenaeus, the great Second Century Bishop of
Lyons (will we be required/allowed to pronounce that
as “Lions” again after Brexit?), a theologian and martyr,
D ivine W orship : T he M issal
who wrote extensively about Christ as having put the
in accordance with the R oman R ite
head back on the human race. All of this relates to what
St Thomas Aquinas called the conditional or congruent
Ordinariate Mass cards with the
necessity of Mary’s perpetual virginity.
Order of Mass from
THE ORDER OF MASS
I don’t know if it was my poor teaching or the fact that
it was very warm or even that it was a Friday afternoon
and the end of a very long week for my students, but
I could see eyelids closing and heads drooping. It is
an important part of the course and I was frantically
searching my mind for some way of recovering the
attention of my class. A quick prayer to Newman
seemed to work. The words of Praise to the Holiest
came into my mind: “I know, I thought, the second and
third verse has all that needs to be said about it.” During
D ivine W orship : T he M issal
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