Cor ad cor loquitur

"Heart speaks unto heart." That is the motto chosen by Blessed John Henry Newman after having been named Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII.

In this beautiful homily, given on September 20th at Catholic University Church in Dublin, Fr. Gerard Deighan elaborates on what "heart speaks unto heart" meant for Newman, and what it should mean for us all.

God’s heart speaks to the heart of every man, and speaks to him in the depths of his heart. Newman will be remembered for many teachings, but for none more than his teaching about conscience. Of course this word is greatly misunderstood nowadays, as it was in Newman’s time. It is taken to mean a person’s own opinion. To follow your conscience is to do what you want. How different, and more profound, is Newman’s idea. For him, conscience is not the voice of man, but rather the voice of God which speaks in man’s heart. To be a man of conscience is to be someone who has learnt to recognise that voice, and listen to it, and to follow its promptings. It was by following his conscience in this sense that Newman was led to abandon his native Anglicanism and become a Catholic, despite the huge personal sacrifices this involved. How he stands as a model and inspiration for us in this regard! We must learn to be more quiet, to hush our own inner voice, our noisy thoughts, and to listen to God’s voice within us. We must seek to find the truth to which that voice directs us, setting aside all falsehoods we may have listened to before, and all mere shadows of the truth: ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem. And we must do this no matter what the personal cost.