Extracts from a homily preached by Bishop Nicholas Hudson on Thursday 17th October 2019 in The Brompton Oratory at a Mass for The London Oratory School in thanksgiving for the canonisation of St John Henry Newman.
Led by the light to some definite service
St John Henry Newman has much to teach us! One of the great lessons he teaches us is that, whatever happens to you, even things that seem bad may well turn out to be good for you in the long run. Because he himself experienced one setback after another. Yet something good seemed always to come of it, in the long run! For example, he knew he was a teacher. He desperately wanted to teach. Yet he did very badly in his exams. He was a brilliant student of Maths and Classics at Oxford. He was expected to do so well. But he overworked; and very nearly failed: he only just passed.
He was still allowed to teach. But he overworked again. Added to which, he had so many worries about his family that he collapsed from the pressure; and had to stop teaching all together. It seemed like a disaster: he wasn’t being allowed to do what he knew he must. So he took what he considered the next best job, to be Vicar of St Mary’s church. What he could never have imagined was that here he had his most rewarding teaching experience! People crowded into the church to hear his homilies; his teaching began a movement of like-minded thinkers. It was called the Oxford Movement; he became famous and influential. He was learning Kipling’s lesson: ‘Triumph and disaster... treat those two imposters just the same.’
St John Henry used to say, we never know what path God has marked out for us. But, deep down, he was convinced that God has, for each of us, what he called ‘some definite service’, that ‘God has created me to do some definite service’, as he put it. ‘I may never know it in this life’, he would say, ‘but I shall be told it in the next.’ It can take years for any of us to discover what God seems to want us to do with our lives. What matters above all is that we seek to serve others by the way we live.
He was seeking always to be of service to others himself. And this led him to lead a most extraordinarily significant life, even if he didn’t always feel he knew where he was going. He expressed this sense of being led without knowing where you’re going as being led by a kind of light, a kindly light which beckoned him forwards to places he could scarcely see. It was another seeming disaster which inspired him to write about it. He went to Sicily with friends. He liked it so much that he decided to return on his own. But, on his way back, he became seriously ill. Disaster: ‘I shouldn’t take have gone back’, he was tempted to think. Yet, it was while he was ill that he felt inspired to write one of the greatest hymns the world has ever known, ‘Lead, Kindly Light’.
‘Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on.’ Words which Pope Francis would quote directly in his homily and in the prayers of the canonisation Mass; words which remind us of the kindly light which St John Henry knew himself, deep down, to be leading him along life’s mysterious journey. He trusted in that light; and was led eventually to sainthood. And now, in recent years, we’ve seen his choice to call on God to be a light in the darkness for others like Deacon Jack, and Melissa and Gemma Villalobos; how, through his intercession, God healed and saved them.
Learn from all of this to trust that St John Henry waits to be a light for you too. It’s unlikely that Jesus needs to work for you a miracle. But rest assured, Jesus wants to be your light; the light and the love of your life. If ever you feel you’re in the dark, you need only call on St John Henry and he will intercede for you; he will ask that Jesus, who is the Light of the World, enlighten your heart and your mind with his luminous love; and lead you to find that definite service he has had in mind for you since before the world was even created.
Published: 18th October 2019