Thursday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time
An enjoyable pastime during a week of family vacation has been reading Louis Bouyer’s biography of John Henry Newman, a work in which Bouyer tries correcting many of the misreadings of Newman that had been produced since the latter’s death. Reading one of the best theologians of the twentieth century present one of the greatest of the nineteenth century is breathtaking business. Bouyer, himself a convert, shows with particular care the great anguish Newman felt in leaving his beloved Church of England, a home within whose walls he felt so secure. If the weight of years, temperament, and relationship were on the side of his remaining at rest, why then did he judge that he must leave?
In today’s Gospel reading St. Peter makes the profession of faith of the early Christians, a profession that would be carried through the centuries and protected from dissolution and compromise, even at the risk of alienating large swaths of the Christian people. Against all the predictions of the overly prudent, this same body under the guidance of Peter’s successor continues to lead its members to the same profession today. What Newman saw within Catholicism was not the sophistication or talent of its clergy, not the reach of its educational system, not the beauty of its liturgy, but the uncompromised witness to the truth revealed in Christ.
In an age allergic to truth claims, we can learn much from revisiting a figure such as John Henry Newman, for he encourages us to stand witness to the saving truth of today’s Gospel, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that his Church, built upon Peter’s Rock, will carry this message, even against the gates of the netherworld.