Newman: The Heart of Holiness
On sale
19th September 2019
Price: £14.99
Newman: The Heart of Holiness looks at the model of holiness Newman offers us to us all, on the occasion of his canonisation, a moment the Church recognises officially that Newman offers a model of holiness that is relevant for the Universal Church.
Newman himself, in fact, said, ‘I have nothing of the saint about me’. The Church, however, has decided otherwise and in October this year Blessed John Henry Newman, poet, tractarian, academic, former Anglican, Catholic convert and Cardinal will be canonised by Pope Francis.
In this book, Roderick Strange brings his own lifetime of learning and studying of Newman together with newer material that has come to light since the beatification to offer a portrait of Newman’s interior life. That is, his intimacy with God and his understanding of Christ, which led him to rejoice in the gift of the Eucharist, and he explores how Newman’s interior life had its outworking in his pastoral ministry serving others.
This understanding of Newman’s spirituality and legacy, suggests the author, might offer us an apologia for our own times, one in which we realise the connection between the sacred and the secular, one in which our faith can sustain us through the inevitable troubles of life, and in which we can cultivate a perceptiveness peculiar to faith, a perceptiveness that helps us recognise the gifts of the Spirit we have received as people who ‘watch for Christ’.
This book, therefore, is an attempt to peel back the layers of Newman’s spirituality so as to explore respectfully the heart of his holiness.
Newman himself, in fact, said, ‘I have nothing of the saint about me’. The Church, however, has decided otherwise and in October this year Blessed John Henry Newman, poet, tractarian, academic, former Anglican, Catholic convert and Cardinal will be canonised by Pope Francis.
In this book, Roderick Strange brings his own lifetime of learning and studying of Newman together with newer material that has come to light since the beatification to offer a portrait of Newman’s interior life. That is, his intimacy with God and his understanding of Christ, which led him to rejoice in the gift of the Eucharist, and he explores how Newman’s interior life had its outworking in his pastoral ministry serving others.
This understanding of Newman’s spirituality and legacy, suggests the author, might offer us an apologia for our own times, one in which we realise the connection between the sacred and the secular, one in which our faith can sustain us through the inevitable troubles of life, and in which we can cultivate a perceptiveness peculiar to faith, a perceptiveness that helps us recognise the gifts of the Spirit we have received as people who ‘watch for Christ’.
This book, therefore, is an attempt to peel back the layers of Newman’s spirituality so as to explore respectfully the heart of his holiness.
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Reviews
Roderick Strange has gift for writing about complex matters in a graceful and accessible way.
Stunning writing . . . simple and accessible prose that left me wanting more.
'His text flows effortlessly and its message is conveyed with clarity, very much in the way that Newman recommended
for preachers.'
I have not been unsympathetic to Newman since I first discovered him in my late teens. But, for a long time now (possibly all the 32 years I have served as a priest in the CofE) I have been resistant, knowing quite a lot about him, but appreciating him, as it were, at a distance. Your book has changed all that, and enabled me to open the door wide; and for that I'm immensely grateful. Like a two-edged sword slipping in between soul and spirit, it spoke to me not just because you've written it so fluently, but because I've seen the whole man for the first time, the whole heart of the man, and felt what anchored him, and how deep over the years that anchor sank.