Father Carl Subler, a U.S. Army chaplain, celebrates Mass for soldiers at a forward operating base in Zabul province, Afghanistan, in this Dec. 12,  2009, photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense. One of the top concerns of the U.S. Archdiocese for Military Services has been for soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. (CNS photo/courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense) (Dec. 19, 2012) See COLLECTION-MILITARY (UPDATED) Dec. 19, 2012.

Faith in God’s providence can help us reflect with clarity on the evil of the war in Ukraine, and on all evils we confront in this life. The Old Testament story of Joseph illustrates the importance of faith in the midst of human evils. Joseph the son of Jacob, after accomplishing a reconciliation with his estranged brothers, looks back on his life of tragedy and subsequent rise to prominence in Egypt and says to his brothers: “As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20). Wrapped in the wickedness of envy, Joseph’s brothers threw him into a well; he was brought to Egypt as a slave; and was cast into prison due to the vengeful lust of Potiphar’s wife. But he was raised out of those depths to advise Pharaoh and, by God’s gift to interpret dreams, provide for the entire land and surrounding nations through years of famine. Even directly malicious actions, over time, can begin a series of events ordered by God’s providential goodness. 

But even before the ‘happy ending,’ it is important to be sustained by a lively faith, from start to finish. In his fourth meditation for Good Friday, Newman reminds us that Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of faith, the origin and the climax, the alpha and the omega. This is an important reminder since, for the Christian, Good Friday is the worst, most evil, most calamitous day in all of history–the day that our sins crucified our loving Creator, Lord, and Savior. But what we intended for evil, God turned into good–literally, his death became the source of our life, for time and eternity. In Christ all things will be “gathered up;’ he is the master and goal and summation of all history, personal, national and global (Ephesians 1:10). To have faith means that we actively find ourselves within this grand story. As children of the family of God, we must trust that God is in control, and that his benevolent providence will always outlast, conquer, and transform even the vilest of human or natural evils. Life rarely gives us circumstances that we expect: failure, misery, suffering in body and mind, disappointment, or death. We rarely anticipate the amount of effort it will take to truly overcome discouragement. But an active faith is the “instrument” of our salvation, God’s appointed means by which we can accomplish the good of His Will for us, which often looks, in this life, like patiently bearing with evil and wrong. 

Faith is a gift from God. He gives it, sustains it, and perfects it. Faith is not a “blind trust,” but is a type of “reasoning” that makes a willed judgment to trust based on the authority and past actions of the person being trusted (Oxford University Sermon 12). Faith is not fideism or quietism or doing nothing as we wait on God to intervene. Faith is perfectly compatible with obedience (Lecture on Justification 1; cf. Romans 1:5, 16:26).  Who would say that a child trusted in, or was faithful to, her parent while she disobeyed? Faith is a certain assurance that God is who He is, and that the situations He has given to me are for my ultimate good, ordered to my salvation, and a part of His holy and mysterious Will. Faith is a full submission of our wills to God’s will.

Faith is a unique kind of judgment, but not opposed to reason. Newman calls it a reasoning “upon antecedent grounds;” faith is not a kind of reasoning that is formed from demonstration or testing of hypotheses or absolute knowledge of the future. Faith is a kind of assumption, but a good assumption: an assumption that a good God will remain good, a just and merciful God will bring about justice and mercy, an all-powerful God will one day make all things new, and that he orders all things to this end. By God’s grace we are not left without proof of this: the Scriptures record God’s faithful ordering of events in the midst of infidelity and calamity, Church History displays His providence in history, and our own minds, given time for reflection, can rekindle in us memories of times gone by when God’s work or faithfulness was evident in people, circumstances, and happy little coincidences. 

While God remains faithful, our faith can fail. Faith can err into faithlessness on the one hand or superstition on the other. Faith is not trusting ourselves to the exclusion of God, but it is also not trusting God to the exclusion of moral action in the world and in prayer. Faith is not a way to magically manipulate God to bring about favorable circumstances according to our own wills. Newman’s wonderful, but dense, Oxford University Sermon 12 draws this out: the highest virtue of love secures faith from falling into these extremes, because kindling a true Love for God and neighbor will awaken in us a full trust in His holy Will and true desire to carry it out despite the costs and difficulties. A man truly in love with his wife will not only honor and do what she says, but will do so in the face of all odds, difficulties and dangers. Shakespeare has it right in his Sonnet 116: “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds…” Just so, faith is not faith that quails when it faces trials. 

Yet if we sin against faith, whether through faithlessness, despair, superstition or presumption, God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). It is in this spirit that Newman concludes his meditation with a prayer for unbelievers, for forgiveness of those who “know not what they do,” who think truth is error and error is truth. Maintaining our own saving faith in God allows us to authentically, in accord with God’s Will, pray for that same faith to be extended to others.

God permits, but does not directly cause, evil because of some greater good it may bring about. The war in Ukraine is unjust; it is against the will of God. And yet, by God’s will, one can imagine the thousands or millions of suffering and fleeing peoples who, perhaps, when faced with such temporal uncertainty, will seek and long for a greater eternal certainty. Who knows what kinds of conversions may take place in the midst of such an upheaval? Who knows in what unexpected ways the Church may–as she has done through countless calamities in human history caused by evil rulers–be transformed from ashes, rubble and blood into something even more glorious? Let us pray first for our own lively faith to be fully nourished, and then also for the people of Ukraine and Russia, and all who suffer from oppressive violence, that they too may be given the gift of faith in God’s mercy.

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Aim at ‘seeing the King in His beauty’.  All things that we see are but shadows to us and delusions, unless we enter into what they really mean.

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you.”

The Psalms, the "voice of the Church," invite us to enter into the sufferings of Christ and His people, and cling to God above all.

Applying Newman's theory, it seems clear that the notion that women's ordination to to the priesthood, would not maintain the type of the early Church.

In 1990, the International Theological Commission, issued a document titled "The Interpretation of Dogma" in which Newman's seven notes are endorsed.

The path forward for us personally and for the Church at large, requires returning to the core truths that Christ Himself has revealed to us.

We are made to be gifts to God and gifts to each other, body and soul; to go against God’s law, which is for our good, is to refuse the gift.

What does John Henry Newman mean by the words: "to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often?"

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About Cardinal John Henry Newman

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A Guide to John Henry Newman will interest educated readers and professors alike, and serve as a text for college seminars for the purpose of studying Newman.

Review by Catherine Maybanks
(Catholic Herald, April 1, 2023)

Review by Serenheed James
(Antiphon, April 2023)

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Fr Peter Conley takes us on an exciting journey into the spirituality and inner life of Saint John Henry Newman.
 

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Endorsement by Neyra Blanco (Amazon)
I bought this book for my son and he loved it, he wrote this review and urged my to submitted: “I think this book has a very beautiful message, because it shows how the young Newman was so determined to achieve his dream of becoming a priest, but even after his dream he continued to work in the church with passion until the day he died, it’s so admirable that even Newman so old and so weak still had that urge to continued his work of being a priest. And the book is well written with words not too complicated with very enjoyable texts and well illustrated pictures. I highly recommend this book for a 5th grader.  

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What is a Classical Liberal Arts Education? Why is it so important for the development of a person?

Fr. Juan R. Vélez answers these and more questions you might have about University Education in the 21st century. This book is aimed for parents, prospective University students, and educators. It will help you discern why adding Liberal Arts electives to your education will help it form it better, and help the student learn to reason, and not just learn.

He also explains how many Universities have changed the true meaning of Liberal Arts, and the subjects, and gives advise on how to choose College Campus, Subjects, and Teachers.

A wonderful book that every parent should also read way before your children are College bound. A Liberal Arts education can start earlier in life, even from home.

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Endorsement by Christopher Moellering (Goodreads, September 14, 2019)
In Passion for Truth Fr. Vélez gave us an outstanding biography of Cardinal Newman. In this work, he provides a concise overview of his thought and his devotion. This is a great work for someone who, perhaps hearing of Newman for the first time because of his beatification 13 October, 2019, wants to know more about this English saint.Vélez is a wonderful writer in his own right, and the frequent quotations from Newman round out the work nicely. I especially appreciated the frequent citing of Newman’s Meditations and Devotions, which show a different side of his spirituality than his more well-known works, Development of Christian Doctrine and the Grammar of Assent.

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Take Five: Meditations with John Henry Newman, endorsement by Illow M. Roque (Amazon, September 3, 2010)
“There is a time to put direct inquiry on hold and give ourselves to prayer and practical duties.” Sound advice from one of the earlier, thought-provoking reminders in this sparkling gem of a book: Take Five | Meditations with John Henry Newman, written by Mike Aquilina and Fr. Juan R. Vélez and published by Our Sunday Visitor. This particular paragraph, referenced above, which begins with a direct quote from soon-to-be canonized priest, cardinal and poet, John Henry Newman: “Study is good, but it gets us only so far . . .” is actually the 15th in a series of 76 concise, logically organized meditations moving from the elementary to the sublime. Each meditation–one per page–is built upon the great man’s writings and remarkably rich spirituality. Whether taken whole in one reading or in part page-by-page over a course of weeks and months, these wonderfully insightful meditations will open up, even to the busiest reader in the midst of the world, a unique pathway into prayer and contemplation. My advice to spiritual inquirers at all levels, from the novice to the spiritually adept, is to follow the authors’ recommendation to use this book as a guide for daily prayer and meditation. The structure of the book itself is ideal: first, the authors introduce us to Cardinal Newman, the man, where we are given the opportunity to get to know him through a brief sketch of his life and spirituality at the beginning of the book. This is something readers will likely find themselves referring to again and again, prompting many, I suspect, to even wider explorations of this most gifted Christian leader. Then comes the meditations, consisting of a short summary of Newman’s thoughts on subjects taken, as the authors explain, from various salient points for which Newman is justly remembered: The pursuit of objective religious truth; Teaching on the Virtues; Defense of the Catholic Church; A devout spiritual and moral life; and Generosity and loyalty in his friendships, which sets the topic and tone for each meditation to follow. Each meditation consists of an excerpt taken from Newman’s thirty-plus volumes of writings and diaries. Next comes three brief and extremely useful sections entitled: “Think About It,” which establishes a prayerfully resonant tone throughout the book; “Just Imagine,” which provides a vivid, prayerful experience of the Scriptures that tie in, and finally, “Remember,” a pithy summation which the authors suggest may be used as a daily aspiration. Each meditation is given its own page, which makes it ideal for daily reflection for readers on the go. This book is a must have for every serious Catholic who wants to take their faith to the next level, which is to respond appropriately to the universal call to holiness and seek interior union with God.
Fr. Peter Conley

Aim at ‘seeing the King in His beauty’.  All things that we see are but shadows to us and delusions, unless we enter into what they really mean.

David Warren

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you.”

Robert Kirkendall

The Psalms, the "voice of the Church," invite us to enter into the sufferings of Christ and His people, and cling to God above all.

Fr. Juan Velez

Applying Newman's theory, it seems clear that the notion that women's ordination to to the priesthood, would not maintain the type of the early Church.

Fr. Juan Velez

In 1990, the International Theological Commission, issued a document titled "The Interpretation of Dogma" in which Newman's seven notes are endorsed.

David Warren

The path forward for us personally and for the Church at large, requires returning to the core truths that Christ Himself has revealed to us.

Robert Kirkendall

We are made to be gifts to God and gifts to each other, body and soul; to go against God’s law, which is for our good, is to refuse the gift.

Fr. Juan Velez

What does John Henry Newman mean by the words: "to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often?"

Fr. Juan Velez

Listening to God is done keeping in mind the normative value of the whole of Tradition and of the Church’s Teaching.