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Document Details : Title: 'All That Is, Seen And Unseen' Subtitle: Newman as a Witness to Holiness Author(s): STRANGE, Roderick Journal: Louvain Studies Volume: 35 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2011 Pages: 410-418 DOI: 10.2143/LS.35.3.2157508 Abstract : Newman’s beatification was not so much a celebration of his ideas as a recognition of his witness to holiness. Where does the key to that witness lie? The suggestion made here looks to his statement about his first conversion when he was fifteen and found himself resting 'in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings', himself and his Creator. That experience shaped his life. Formidably original, Newman’s originality did not lie in his reordering of other people’s ideas, but in exploring his own; and he came to recognize in reality the way both the seen and the unseen dimensions were interwoven. Whether studying the Alexandrian Fathers, reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or reflecting on Keble’s poetry, he was surprised to discover this truth in them that he had already discovered for himself. And this vision of reality was one that he wanted to share with others. In a notable Christmas sermon, 'Christ Hidden from the World', he encouraged people to be alert to this vision of reality so that they might be able to perceive all that is, seen and unseen. Newman as a model of holiness is someone who speaks to us of God, as if he could see the invisible. |
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