Show Notes
Today we're looking at Newman's famous hymn Lead Kindly Light and God's protection in the face of adversity. Fr Michael Halsall is a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. A former Anglican minister, Fr Michael spent six years as a Chaplain in the British Army, serving on front line operations in Northern Ireland and Bosnia. It was this latter deployment that Lead Kindly Light took on a new significance. Attached to an Artillery regiment, supporting soldiers spiritually and pastorally, who were tasked with breaking down hostilities between the warring factions, he describes his arrival in January 1996, in sub-zero temperatures, as "a descent into hell". Villages were still burning, people were displaced, having suffered some of the worst atrocities since the Second World War. Fr Michael posted a copy of Newman's hymn on the wall of his makeshift room in a converted factory: "After days on the road each week I would return and reflect on Newman’s words - particularly on the first verse as a prayer and thanksgiving for protection. "Much of our travelling and encounter with soldiers was often in the dark in those short mid-winter days, when they had finished their patrols and had some food. I remember leading a service at one of our gun battery positions outside in the snow, and in the pitch darkness by the AS90 gun emplacement. Soldiers often have a strong sense of the spiritual when life becomes precarious, and more so as three of our men did not make it home, but were killed whilst on patrol."
More from Journeying With Newman
Today's 'Journeying With Newman' podcast, a new offering to mark the first anniversary of the Canonisation of Saint John Henry Newman, looks back ten years to the Oratorian's Beatification in Birmingham. These words come from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's homily at Cofton Park when the then-Holy Father declared Newman 'Blessed'.
Brother Emmanuel Durant is a Dominican academic who teaches theology at the Angelicum in Rome. In this podcast, he examines John Henry Newman's teaching on Divine Providence and Human Agency.
Today's reflection for our 'Journeying With Newman' podcast series is notable as it's the first episode released after the canonisation. John Henry Newman is now a saint. Dr. Andrew Meszaros is a lecturer in Systematic Theology at Ireland’s Pontifical University, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth. His focus falls today on Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. "The power of Newman’s prose comes, in part, from the cumulative weight that accrues from all his examples of how the various elements of the Christian tradition all stand and fall together... Newman reminds us that to pick one aspect of Christianity, and reject another is tantamount to a false Christianity. And conversely, we should remember that all that we believe and do as Catholics is in some way related to the core of our faith. Nothing authentically Catholic is insignificant."
Historian and commentator Joanna Bogle gives us an entertaining and insightful reflection on Newman and the Church with a particular historical focus on the Church as the guardian of truth. "[The Church] is glorious in her cherishing of truth: we cannot, we must not, ever allow ourselves to do less than honour her. Her story is a great one. Saints and martyrs, heroes and heroines, great missionary endeavours, glorious art and music, the foundations of modern sciences and of the great universities… and much, much more. We cannot, we must not, dismiss or ignore all of this, muddled though it all is – and muddied too by cruelty and injustice, by human sin and error. "In John Henry Newman, we find a passion for truth that we should follow. It is his greatest single gift to us."
Today's 'Journeying With Newman' podcast is a reflection from Fortunato Morrone - a parish priest from Italy and teacher of Systematic Theology at the Calabrian Theological Institute.