Our annual Quarant’ore devotion — Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament all weekend — begins with a Solemn Mass on Friday evening. The Sacrament will remain exposed, and the church open, all night and throughout the next day, interrupted only by the celebration of Mass. The altar will be decorated with many candles and flowers, and in the centre a throne, and on the throne the monstrance. The opening Mass will feature beautiful vestments and the best music, building in a great crescendo of as much splendour as we can muster. And then, the music stops, and the lights are dimmed, and all focus is on that gold monstrance. And there our focus, our attention, our hearts, will remain for forty hours.

For what is placed in the monstrance, is a Who and not a thing: he is Christ the Lord, and we come to be in his company, in his presence. Even though we will see the Host, seemingly immovable and inactive surrounded by candles and flowers and hangings, we know that there is more happening than the eye can see. Christ is not inactive and immovable in the Eucharist. In this sacrament, he continually pours himself out in love for us and for the world he came to save. We gaze on him in the Blessed Sacrament because he first gazed upon us with eyes of love, a look that sees into the very core of our being, loving us, calling out to us, asking that we forsake our sinful ways and our petty distractions, and return our love for his. Where Christ is, there is heaven and when Christ comes he never comes alone. All of heaven draws near to us: the angels and the saints, our brothers and sisters who have gone on before us draw close; past, present and future all converge in him who is the Lord of time and history. This is why when the Christian prays, even in early in the morning in a dark church, he or she never prays alone. And this gift, this call to step out of time and into his company, is given not because we deserve it, nor is it denied us because we are sinful. It is given because of the love he has for us, and the mercy with which he deals with us until the day when our time is ended.

So we still our souls, we raise our hearts and minds and voices to the Lord. We put aside our distractions for a time and cease to worry about what we have to do or how we are to pray. Prayer, after all, is not the words we speak. It is focusing on him, gazing on him. It is listening to the heart of God speaking to our hearts, and our hearts making their fleeting, and faltering, and yet eminently precious answer to his love. So come to the Lord this weekend during the Forty Hours, if not for the all-night vigil then at least for an hour or so. He will be waiting to spend time with you.

These words were preached by Monsignor Ronald Knox at the Birmingham Oratory in 1945 to commemorate the centenary of Saint John Henry Newman’s conversion. For most Saints we celebrate their feast day on the date they died — their heavenly birthday. Saint John Henry Newman died on 11 August, a date already impeded by the feast of St Clare, and so 9 October was chosen, the date on which he was received into the Catholic Church at Littlemore by Blessed Dominic Barberi.

But why is the conversion of Newman so important? Principally because it is a profound witness to the truth. Newman was a man of great learning and influence, and was a respected Anglican clergyman, preacher, and academic. But his studies, particularly of Church History and the Church Fathers, led him to realise that the fullness of truth was in the Catholic Church. His journey to Rome is perhaps best summed up by his now famous maxim, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” Monsignor Knox says of Newman’s conversion, “Truth stood before him, fully embodied, and he gave way.” After his conversion, Newman suffered insults and slander for being received into what he called “the one true fold of the Redeemer.” He reminds us that the search for truth may demand sacrifice, but ultimately leads to joy and peace in Christ.

In the world today, where truth seems to be increasingly relativistic, where everyone can have their own “truth”, it is easy to become despondent and ask with Pilate, “What is truth?” But we know that truth, the Truth, is a person: Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord himself tells us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

This is certainly what Newman firmly believed to be true. In his hymn written after his conversion taken from The Dream of Gerontius, Newman expresses his conviction that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Our Lord, holding the fullness of truth: 

And I hold in veneration,
for the love of him alone,
Holy Church as his creation,
and her teachings as his own.

When Monsignor Knox preached at the Birmingham Oratory, the Hierarchy considered Newman’s conversion such a pivotal moment for the Church in our country that they gathered to celebrate the centenary of that historical event. How much more ought we to celebrate the ninth of October, now not as a historical event, but as the feast of a Saint, and soon of a Doctor of the Church. We ask the prayers of Our Cardinal for the Oratories in England and for the conversion of our country. 

St John Henry Newman, pray for us!