Acta Apostolicae Sedis - Commentarium Officiale642

VII

Iter Apostolicum Summi Pontificis in Regnum Unitum: Londinii, in Vigilia

precationum ob beatificationem Cardinalis Ioannis Henrici Newman, in Hyde

Park habita.*

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This is an evening of joy, of immense spiritual joy, for all of us. We are

gathered here in prayerful vigil to prepare for tomorrow's Mass, during which

a great son of this nation, Cardinal John Henry Newman, will be declared

Blessed. How many people, in England and throughout the world, have

longed for this moment! It is also a great joy for me, personally, to share

this experience with you. As you know, Newman has long been an important

influence in my own life and thought, as he has been for so many people

beyond these isles. The drama of Newman's life invites us to examine our

lives, to see them against the vast horizon of God's plan, and to grow in

communion with the Church of every time and place: the Church of the

apostles, the Church of the martyrs, the Church of the saints, the Church

which Newman loved and to whose mission he devoted his entire life.

I thank Archbishop Peter Smith for his kind words of welcome in your

name, and I am especially pleased to see the many young people who are

present for this vigil. This evening, in the context of our common prayer, I

would like to reflect with you about a few aspects of Newman's life which I

consider very relevant to our lives as believers and to the life of the Church

today.

Let me begin by recalling that Newman, by his own account, traced the

course of his whole life back to a powerful experience of conversion which he

had as a young man. It was an immediate experience of the truth of God's

word, of the objective reality of Christian revelation as handed down in the

Church. This experience, at once religious and intellectual, would inspire his

vocation to be a minister of the Gospel, his discernment of the source of

authoritative teaching in the Church of God, and his zeal for the renewal

of ecclesial life in fidelity to the apostolic tradition. At the end of his life,

Newman would describe his life's work as a struggle against the growing

tendency to view religion as a purely private and subjective matter, a ques-

* Die 18 Septembris 2010.