(Published in the diocesan e-newsletter, Thursday 2 October 2025)

Reflection - Newman’s Gospel of Stars

The forthcoming Jubilee of Education theme ‘The Constellation of Hope’, would have appealed to St John Henry Newman. He had a lifelong interest in science and astronomy, built an observatory and sought to hire the best stargazer available, for his students at the university he founded in Dublin. 
 
Newman described the psalms as his “prayer book”. Within the range of emotions these sacred texts explore, Newman grounded his motto, ‘heart speaks to heart’, to describe God’s intimate relationship with every person. Our local Oratorian Saint was also mindful of God’s care of the natural environment. These aspects of Newman’s thought are poignantly expressed in the following verses of Psalm 147:
 
The Lord “…heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of stars; he gives to all of them their names.”
 
Newman composed three reflections on the virtue of Hope, which inspire our Christ-centred pilgrimage during this year’s Jubilee celebrations. He invites us to make his words our own:
 
I am created to do something or to be something for which no one else is created; I have my place in God’s councils, in God’s world, which no one else has…God knows me and calls me by my name. (Meditations and Devotions)

As we respond to such great love, through the providential gifts of our humanity, we open ourselves to the grace of holiness - so that Mary’s ‘let it be done’ can be said more and more of us. We, on earth, whenever we gather in Church, or to pray wherever we happen to be, are enwrapped by the ‘canopy’ of heaven - in a galaxy called ‘salvation’. Newman expresses this sense of God’s presence in one of his Marian reflections when he writes:
 
Mary is the star, shining with the light of Jesus, fair as the moon, and special as the sun, the star of the heavens, which it is good to look upon…and peace is poured upon the soul. (Meditations and Devotions)
 
Fr Peter Conley