On the Italian site Oratoriani I found that the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments on 15 June approved the liturgical texts for the Memorial of (soon-to-be) Blessed John Henry Newman.
Here is the COLLECT for the Memorial, which could perhaps be on 9 October, the day in 1845 he was brought into greater light and received into Holy Catholic Church at Littlemore. The Common of Pastors will be used.
Remember that the feasts of "blesseds" are not for the whole Latin Church. They are usually just local feasts or feasts for interested religious institutes.
At first, this memorial will only be used by Oratorians, the Oratorian Confederation. I don’t believe the local Church of the Archdiocese of Birmingham will use this memorial, even though that is where the tomb of Bl. John Henry is found. Local Churches will have to request the use the memorial.
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.
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 Cic.)." 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 a word a certain bishop in Pennsylvania might not like 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 Ven. 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 seeThe 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 smileWhich I have loved long since, and lost awhile.
A version of the hymn, just to help you ponder.
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[NB: A contact tipped me that on the Oratorian site an earlier version of the CDWDS version had been posted. It has been corrected.]
CDWDS 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.
UPDATE:
A comment below states that ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem was Ven. 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 – the turning point at which we, who are moving out and away, begin to return.
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.
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