Acta Benedicti Pp. XVI 621

England has a long tradition of martyr saints, whose courageous witness

has sustained and inspired the Catholic community here for centuries. Yet it

is right and fitting that we should recognize today the holiness of a confessor,

a son of this nation who, while not called to shed his blood for the Lord,

nevertheless bore eloquent witness to him in the course of a long life devoted

to the priestly ministry, and especially to preaching, teaching, and writing.

He is worthy to take his place in a long line of saints and scholars from these

islands, Saint Bede, Saint Hilda, Saint Aelred, Blessed Duns Scotus, to name

but a few. In Blessed John Henry, that tradition of gentle scholarship, deep

human wisdom and profound love for the Lord has borne rich fruit, as a sign

of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit deep within the heart of God's

people, bringing forth abundant gifts of holiness.

Cardinal Newman's motto, Cor ad cor loquitur, or "Heart speaks unto

heart", gives us an insight into his understanding of the Christian life as a

call to holiness, experienced as the profound desire of the human heart to

enter into intimate communion with the Heart of God. He reminds us that

faithfulness to prayer gradually transforms us into the divine likeness. As he

wrote in one of his many fine sermons, "a habit of prayer, the practice of

turning to God and the unseen world in every season, in every place, in every

emergency - prayer, I say, has what may be called a natural effect in

spiritualizing and elevating the soul. A man is no longer what he was before;

gradually ... he has imbibed a new set of ideas, and become imbued with fresh

principles".1 Today's Gospel tells us that no one can be the servant of two

masters,2 and Blessed John Henry's teaching on prayer explains how the

faithful Christian is definitively taken into the service of the one true Master,

who alone has a claim to our unconditional devotion.3 Newman helps us to

understand what this means for our daily lives: he tells us that our divine

Master has assigned a specific task to each one of us, a "definite service",

committed uniquely to every single person: "I have my mission", he wrote, "I

am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not

created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an

angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place ... if I do but keep his

commandments and serve him in my calling".4

1 Parochial and Plain Sermons, IV, 230-231. 2 Cfr. Lk 16:13. 3 Cfr. Mt 23:10. 4 Meditations and Devotions, 301-2.