Acta Benedicti Pp. XVI 643

tion of personal opinion. Here is the first lesson we can learn from his life: in

our day, when an intellectual and moral relativism threatens to sap the very

foundations of our society, Newman reminds us that, as men and women

made in the image and likeness of God, we were created to know the truth, to

find in that truth our ultimate freedom and the fulfilment of our deepest

human aspirations. In a word, we are meant to know Christ, who is himself

"the way, and the truth, and the life".1

Newman's life also teaches us that passion for the truth, intellectual

honesty and genuine conversion are costly. The truth that sets us free

cannot be kept to ourselves; it calls for testimony, it begs to be heard, and

in the end its convincing power comes from itself and not from the human

eloquence or arguments in which it may be couched. Not far from here, at

Tyburn, great numbers of our brothers and sisters died for the faith; the

witness of their fidelity to the end was ever more powerful than the

inspired words that so many of them spoke before surrendering everything

to the Lord. In our own time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the Gospel is

no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered but it often involves being

dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied. And yet, the Church cannot

withdraw from the task of proclaiming Christ and his Gospel as saving truth,

the source of our ultimate happiness as individuals and as the foundation of a

just and humane society.

Finally, Newman teaches us that if we have accepted the truth of Christ

and committed our lives to him, there can be no separation between what we

believe and the way we live our lives. Our every thought, word and action

must be directed to the glory of God and the spread of his Kingdom. Newman

understood this, and was the great champion of the prophetic office of the

Christian laity. He saw clearly that we do not so much accept the truth in a

purely intellectual act as embrace it in a spiritual dynamic that penetrates to

the core of our being. Truth is passed on not merely by formal teaching,

important as that is, but also by the witness of lives lived in integrity, fidelity

and holiness; those who live in and by the truth instinctively recognize what

is false and, precisely as false, inimical to the beauty and goodness which

accompany the splendour of truth, veritatis splendor.

Tonight's first reading is the magnificent prayer in which Saint Paul asks

that we be granted to know "the love of Christ which surpasses all under-

1 Jn 14:6.