Lead, Kindly Light

His early history was familiar to every Englishman.

His wistful and pathetic pilgrimage, and especially the pilgrimage that enriched our literature by the addition of Lead, Kindly Light, had been followed with breathless curiosity and deepening compassion.

And when at length he retired to Littlemore to settle the question on which everything depended, an entire people waited for his decision with the strained intensity with which at other times they await the result of a general election or the issue of an important military engagement.

In that modest cottage at Littlemore, the lonely thinker, shut up to his vigils and fastings and prayers, appeared to the multitude as a kind of intellectual Caruso.

He was never at home in Protestantism, and the church in whose lap he pillowed his throbbing brows left his heart still hungry.

Yet through the intervening mists he saw far off the white glimmer of sunshine.

Through the encircling gloom he dimly beheld the kindly light.

What was it? We shall see.

There's a final detail about Newman I find especially moving.

His famous prayer, Lead, Kindly Light, was written in 1833, years before his conversion to Catholicism.

He was ill, traveling home from the Mediterranean, facing considerable uncertainty about his future.

In that prayer, he wrote, I do not ask to see the distance seen.

... love of music.

He- feverish, alone in Sicily, he wrote Lead, Kindly Light, a, a hymn written not out of clarity, but, uh, out of not being able to see the road.

What does that mean that the Church's newest doctor gave us that of all things?

Hmm.