Luceat!

This just in: Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman to be Named ‘Blessed’!

Being largely the product of a Newman Center formation, and somewhat acquainted with his life and works, I’ve long had a distinct admiration for the good Cardinal. It’s been nearly a decade since I first took refreshment from the font of the saintly don’s prolific intellect…

On a clear, brisk afternoon in the fall of 1999, I stood in the stone arch doorway on the east side of the courtyard of Newman Hall at the University of Illinois. I had gone outdoors to savor the relative quiet, the good weather, and some excellent pipe tobacco. Yes, I could have written “Confessions of an 18-Year-Old Pipe Smoker,” except that the narrative would have been rather thin. I had come to the U of I as an English major with a lot of idyllic (and antiquated) images in my head of what the college experience ought to look, sound, and feel like, and on this particular afternoon I intended simply to look at the world and think.

I stood there, doubtless in odd contrast to my peers: overweight, bespectacled, probably too young to be thoughtfully smoking a pipe, backward-turned Ivy League cap on my head. One of the most unfortunate things about my otherwise completely acceptable living situation, I thought, was that the hardwood-paneled lounge inside didn’t allow for my current pastime, else I could have been reading something (which would have perfectly completed the pretentious picture).

So, in want of more substantial reading material, I decided to ponder the large metal (bronze?) plaques adorning either side of the doorway. One quoted George Washington’s farewell address:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The other cited Newman’s The Idea of a University:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk, then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man.

While I recognized that our first President’s warning was well worth heeding, the vividness of Newman’s word-images impelled me to commit his cautionary gem to memory. I had nary an inkling then how much my years as a student–and later as a missionary–would be marked by contention “against those giants”. Still less did I realize that the most intense struggle wasn’t to be found ‘out there’ in illuminating the darkness of other souls. The intervening years have shown me the truth of Chesterton’s answer to the question “What’s wrong with the world?”: I am. The good Cardinal knew that conversion wasn’t simply a matter of neat formulas and tidy arguments to change the mind, but the more miraculous transformation of will.

I grappled off-and-on with other Important Questions during those shining years of student-hood: Why am I here? Where am I going? Who am I to become? As I stumbled through the fog, Newman’s famous “The Pillar of the Cloud”–suggested to me by an insightful priest–offered consolation I remember in my better moments of trust-in-confusion:

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’ encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home –
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene — one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.