Heroes of history should and usually do have a perpetual place in our minds, hearts and words
3 min • Digitized on May 5, 2023
From A Defense of the Teachings of Mary, page 53
By St. John Henry Newman
2. Now secondly, her greatness. Here let us suppose that our first parents had overcome in their trial; and had gained for their descendants for ever the full possession, as if by right, of the privileges which were promised: to their obedience,—grace here and glory hereafter.
Is it possible that those descendants, pious and happy from age to age in their temporal homes, would have forgotten their benefactors? Would they not have followed them in thought into the heavens, and gratefully commemorated them on earth?
The history of the temptation, the craft of the serpent, their stedfastness in obedience,—the loyal vigilance, the sensitive purity of Eve,—the great issue, salvation wrought out for all generations,—would have been never from their minds, ever welcome to their ears.
This would have taken place from the necessity of our nature. Every nation has its mythical hymns and epics about its first fathers and its heroes. The great deeds of Charlemagne, Alfred, Coeur de Lion, Wallace, Louis the ninth, do not die; and though their persons are gone from us, we make much of their names.
Milton’s Adam, after his fall, understands the force of this law, and shrinks from the prospect of its operation.
“Who of all ages to succeed, but, feeling the evil on him brought by me, will curse my head? Ill fare our ancestor impure, for this we may thank Adam.”
If this anticipation has not been fulfilled in the event, it is owing to the needs of our penal life, our state of perpetual change, and the ignorance and unbelief incurred by the fall; also because, fallen as we are, from the hopefulness of our nature, we feel more pride in our national great men, than dejection at our national misfortunes.
Much more then in the great kingdom and people of God;—the Saints are ever in our sight, and not as mere ineffectual ghosts, but as if present bodily in their past selves. It is said of them, “Their works do follow them;” what they were here, such are they in heaven and in the Church. As we call them by their earthly names, so we contemplate them in their earthly characters and histories.
Their acts, callings, and relations below, are types and anticipations of their mission above. Even in the case of our Lord Himself, whose native home is the eternal heavens, it is said of Him in His state of glory, that He is “a Priest for ever;” and when He comes again, He will be recognized by those who pierced Him, as being the very same that He was on earth.