Heroes of the Faith
"On Saints and Saintliness", Part IV
by John Henry Newman, 19th cen.
I confess to a delight in reading the lives, and dwelling on the
characters and actions, of the saints of the first ages, such as I receive
from none besides them; and for this reason, because we know so much more
about them than about most of the saints who come after them. People
are variously constituted; what influences one does not influence another.
There are persons of warm imaginations, who can easily picture to themselves
what they never saw. They can at will see Angels and Saints hovering
over them when they are in church; they see their lineaments, their features,
their motions, their gestures, their smile or their grief. They can
go home and draw what they have seen, from the vivid memory of what, while
it lasted, was so transporting. I am not one of such; I am touched
by my five senses, by what my eyes behold and my ears hear. I am
touched by what I read about, not by what I myself create. As faith
need not lead to practice, so in me mere imagination does not lead to devotion.
I gain more from the life of our Lord in the Gospels than from a treatise
de Deo. I gain more from three verses of St. John than from
the three points of a meditation.
...I want to hear a Saint converse; I am not content to look at him
as a statue; his words are the index of his hidden life, as far as that
life can be known to man, for "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh". This is why I exult in the folios of the Fathers.
I am not obliged to read the whole of them, I read what I can and am content...
A Saint's writings are to me his real "Life"; and what is called his
"Life" is not the outline of an individual, but either of the auto-saint
or of a myth. Perhaps I shall be asked what I mean by "Life".
I mean a narrative which impresses the reader with the idea of moral unity,
identity, growth, continuity, personality. When a Saint converses
with me, I am conscious of the presence of one active principle of thought,
one individual character, flowing on and into the various matters which
he discusses, and the different transactions in which he mixes. It
is what no memorials can reach, however skillfully elaborated, however
free from effort or study, however conscientiously faithful, however guaranteed
by the veracity of the writers.
excerpted from A Newman Treasury, selected and
edited by Charles Frederick Harrold, (c) 1943 by Longman, Green and Co.,
Inc., Arlington House Publisher, New Rochesse, New York
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