9 October – Feast of St. John Henry Newman – WDTPRS: Collect and “Lead, Kindly Light”

Here is the COLLECT for the Feast of  St. John Henry Newman Memorial, anniversary of the day, 9 October 1845, when he was brought into greater light and received into Holy Catholic Church at Littlemore.

Leo XIV proclaim St. John Henry to be the 38th Doctor of the Church on 1 November 2025.

LATIN:
Deus, qui beátum Ioánnem Henrícum, presbýterum,
lumen benígnum tuum sequéntem
pacem in Ecclésia tua inveníre contulísti,
concéde propítius,
ut, eius intercessióne et exémplo,
ex umbris et imagínibus
in plenitúdinem veritátis tuae perducámur.

The use of confero might raise an eyebrow.  Buried in the entry for confero in our Lewis & Short Dictionary we find “With the access. idea of application or communication, to devote or apply something to a certain purpose, to employ, direct, confer, bestow upon, give, lend, grant, to transfer to (a favorite word with Cicero.).”  The problem is that contulisti here has the sense of “grant”, but then we also have to deal with concede down the line, which also normally comes off as “grant”.  So, I will stick with “grant” for confero and then use something else for concede.

An imago is certainly an “image” or “copy”, it is also a “ghost, likeness, echo, semblance, appearance” or “shade”.

WDTPRS LITERAL VERSION:
O God, who granted blessed John Henry,
a priest following Your kindly light,
to find peace in Your Church,
graciously vouchsafe,
by his intercession and example,
that we may be drawn from shadows and shades
into the fullness of Your truth.

You will notice right away the reference to the a poem written by John Henry in 1833 later rendered as a popular hymn, Lead Kindly Light.

You might know the story of its writing.  When the young Newman was traveling in Italy he fell ill. He experienced a time of great emotional and spiritual discouragement. When a nurse asked him what troubled him, he responded, “I have work to do in England.”  Eventually he got passage on a boat home, but they were constrained to heave to, slowed by a thick fog and nearby cliffs.  Trapped in the fog, on June 16 Newman wrote The Pillar of the Cloud:

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the 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.

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.

A version of the hymn, just to help you ponder.

OFFICIAL VERSION:
O God, who bestowed on the Priest blessed John Henry Newman
the grace to follow your kindly light
and find peace in your Church;
graciously grant that,
through his intercession and example,
we may be led out of shadows and images
into the fulness of your truth.

In this world we walk by faith, not by sight.

We peer towards mystery through the dark glass,…

…through the crack in the rock,…

…through chink in the garden wall.

The hope of Christians draws us to the One who will draw us forth from this shadowy place into His marvelous light.

Holy Church is our surest path to that which is good and true and beautiful.

Of interest is that  “ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem” was John Henry’s epitaph.

However we put this, “from shadows and shades into truth”, “from out of shadows and reflections into truth”, “from shadows and phantasms into truth”, “from illusions and approximations into reality”… this has a rather Platonic ring to it.

For Newman this certainly also meant something like “from the Church of England and from Anglo-Catholic to the Roman Catholic Church”.

You might imagine yourself, if you have your Platonic hat on, moving away from the back of the cave, turning around, and heading out of the cave to your source.

At the heart of the Platonic and Augustinian paradigm is conversion – μετάνοια – the turning point at which we, who are moving out and away, begin to return.

St. John Henry captures this “turning point” in Lead, Kindly Light, during a period of illness and uncertainty:

“I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on.”

Here is metanoia. The man who once insisted on choosing his own road now asks to be led. His celebrated “one step enough for me” expresses surrender.

This is a paradigm found in many of the Latin Church’s more ancient prayers.  It is also found in the experience of the penitent and of the worshiper at Holy Mass.