Festivals of Faith

I guess I’ve been on a liturgical-year kick. John Henry Newman was probably the finest preacher of the nineteenth century, and his gentle sermons are chock-full of shrewd insights into the Gospel and into human psychology.

Dr. Melinda Nielsen has combed through the hefty multi-volume collection of Newman’s sermons and selected twenty-two for various feast days. Her pairing of sermons with feasts is excellent, despite some differences between Newman’s calendar and our own.

Read one sermon of Newman’s, and you will agree with what a contemporary said of him: “He laid the finger how gently, yet how powerfully, on some… show more.