By Bishop James Conley
When Newman was made a cardinal, he borrowed his motto from St. Francis de Sales, the holy bishop of Geneva. When I was made a bishop in 2008, I borrowed it as well!
The motto is cor ad cor loquitur—heart speaks to heart. Newman wished, above all, to be an evangelist of the heart.
Newman was brilliant—he was trained in logic and rhetoric, and he used those tools to analyze complex issues precisely. But Newman was convinced that logical arguments could clarify and instruct, but they could not, alone, convert and win souls to Christ.
“The heart is commonly reached,” he wrote, “not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.”
Instead, Newman believed souls are won to Christ by the heart through “personal influence” —that love for Jesus Christ precedes knowledge, and that love, and love alone, makes knowledge meaningful. Hearts long for Christ, Newman knew, because they were made for Christ. Revealing Christ to the heart, and to its longings, would bring souls to communion with God.
Newman wrote that “man is not sufficient for his own happiness; he is not happy except the Presence of God be with him. When he was created, God breathed into him that supernatural life of the Spirit which is his true happiness; and when he fell, he lost the divine gift, and with it his happiness also. Ever since he has been unhappy; ever since he has a void within him which needs filling, and he knows not how to fill it.”
Christ, and Christ alone, could fill the void, the longing, the unhappiness that Newman encountered in so many of his contemporaries. He wrote “there is a voice within us, which assures us that there is something higher than earth. We cannot analyze, define, contemplate what it is that thus whispers to us... And this yearning of our nature is met and sustained, it finds an object to rest upon, when it hears the existence of an All-powerful, All-gracious Creator.”
His solution was to preach Christ. He went to great lengths to sweep away misperceptions and stereotypes of Christ—he knew that many people felt they knew who Jesus was, without ever encountering the Suffering Servant himself, the man who was Incarnate Son of the Father.
His divinity and his humanity, Newman knew, were attractive—he preached the authority of Christ, who could order the disorder of broken lives. He preached the power of Christ, who could heal and transform what was broken. And he preached the mercy of Christ, who called sinners. Somewhere, Newman knew, sinners know the emptiness of sinfulness. They long for mercy, and they long for a Savior who will pull them from emptiness to fullness—even along a narrow and difficult path.
Newman also knew that the sacraments could touch hearts, because they were concrete and objective encounters with Christ. Newman explained the sacramental life in a personal way—as encounters with Jesus Christ, the person, himself. He spoke of them as the indwelling of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and emphasized the transformative personal nature of the sacramental life. And he celebrated the sacraments with profound reverence, and encouraged their beautiful celebration, knowing that sensible and mysterious encounters would dispose the faithful to appreciate the objective reality of the sacramental life.
Newman’s definitive biographer, Father Ian Ker, put it this way: the secret of Christian propagation “is summed up in Newman’s words: ‘the keen, vivid, constraining glance of Christ’s countenance.’ It is not a philosophical or theological abstraction but the ‘piercing, soul-subduing look of the Son of Man’ who fulfills the otherwise unfillable human longing for ‘an object of life.’ The new evangelization, Newman would insist, must not preach Christianity but the person of Jesus Christ.”
Newman was a great advocate for the role of laity in the life of the Church. His studies of history had demonstrated to him that a well-catechized and faithful laity would do more to form Catholic culture than any clerical initiative.
Newman advocated for an educated laity, a well-formed and conscientious laity, who could contribute to the welfare of the Church, and to the formation of Catholic culture.
“It was mainly by the faithful people,” Newman wrote, “that paganism was overthrown; it was by the faithful people, under the lead of Athanasius and the Egyptian bishops, and in some places supported by their bishops and priests, that the worst of heresies was withstood.”
“In all times,” said Newman, “the laity have been the measure of the Catholic spirit.”
In our time, the secularism we face will be overcome if laity—parents, students, politicians, physicians—are able to inform their own spheres with the spirit of the Gospel. And, the lay aptitude and obligation of evangelization should not be understated.
Newman had no desire to impinge the role of pastoral leadership. But Newman understood what we must also understand: the Holy Spirit moves, and speaks, and prompts in every heart. We must help Catholics to discern the Holy Spirit, and offer guidance, and even correction, when necessary.
In 2013 in Mexico City, Archbishop Charles Chaput remarked that “we need to grasp that the ‘new’ evangelization is finally very much like the ‘old’ evangelization. We need to understand the hopes and fears of today’s world, and especially its young adults. And we need to master the new technologies and methods to reach people where they are today. But programs and techniques don’t convert the human heart. Only the witness of other people can do that.”
The new evangelization is, in fact, very much like the old evangelization—evangelization that leads people to encounter Christ, to be zealous for the Gospel, to seek the heroism of the ordinary Christian life.
The Church today faces grave challenges. Newman faced them, and so must we. Evangelization will bring the world back to Christ. Evangelization must be in collaboration with a faithful and well-formed laity. We must be evangelists by forming disciples of Jesus Christ through ‘personal influence.’ And we must be evangelists cor ad cor—speaking from our hearts to all hearts, revealing the mercy, love, and power of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ.
