(Published in the diocesan e-newsletter, Thursday 9 October 2025)

Reflection - Newman saintly ‘singing in the rain’

John Henry Newman paced the floor of his Oxfordshire cottage, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Dominic Barberi, a Passionist Order priest, on the dark and stormy night of 8 October 1845. 
 
He had invited him to hear his confession and receive him into the Catholic Church - after many years of prayer and soul-searching. When they finally met, Newman recognised immediately Barberi’s shrewdness, intuition, child-like simplicity of heart and profound holiness. Both men were inspired by Marian devotion, the lives of the Saints and a mutual quest for holiness. They also shared a ‘down to earth’ firmness of character and tenderness of spirit. Barberi warmly described Newman as “a babe in Christ”.
 
Perhaps influenced by Barberi, Newman, as a Catholic priest, adapted his own preaching style to be more natural and conversational, so as to easily connect with the educational diversity and socio-economic background of his parishioners, in the Victorian inner city of Birmingham.
 
Newman and Barberi also bonded over a shared sense of self-directed humour. Dominic, according to his biographer, Alfred Wilson, referred to himself as “working like a donkey”. While John Henry, could recall a witty comparison he had made, by likening himself to “a cart-horse”, in terms of his public witness to Christ’s teaching, whereas St John Chrysostom, one of his heroes, “was a stallion.” Dominic, for his part, while drying out by the fire, immediately saw the comic possibilities of being thoroughly soaked, as he attempted to calm down Newman’s faith-sharing talkativeness, by cracking a cringe-worthy pun and name-checking the local village where they were in the process: “let us just wait a little more and a little more will be done for the glory of God.”
 
Newman, according to his friend Lord Blatchford’s memoirs: “always saw the point of a joke”. We can imagine Newman and Barberi having a ‘laugh out loud’ moment - or two! Maybe, they even, spontaneously, went outside to ‘sing in the rain’ as a result!
 
The next morning, we can perhaps imagine that Newman, as a spiritual  response to the profoundness of all that had happened to him, may have been moved to quote from one of his Anglican homilies, after he made his First Holy Communion, at a Mass celebrated by Barberi, on the writing table where Newman had composed his book ‘The Development of Doctrine’. 
 
Poignantly, the research for this book had a convinced him to become a Catholic. Barberi’s own pastoral ministry would have been strengthened by these words too: “Let us pray to be filled with the spirit of love…work cheerfully, let us suffer, thankfully; let us throw our heart into what we think, say, and do, and may it be a spiritual heart! This is to be a new creature in Christ; this is to walk by faith.”  (Parochial and Plain Sermons 5, 12).
 
Fr Peter Conley

image c. cbcew/mazur