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Poem: “Sensitiveness”

Sensitiveness

Time was, I shrank from what was right,
From fear of what was wrong;
I would not brave the sacred fight,
Because the foe was strong.
But now I cast that finer sense
And sorer shame aside;
Such dread of sin was indolence,
Such aim at heaven was pride.
So, when my Saviour calls, I rise,
And calmly do my best;
Leaving to Him, with silent eyes
Of hope and fear, the rest.
I step, I mount where He has led;
Men count my haltings o’er;—
I know them; yet, though self I dread,
I love his precept more.

John Henry Newman


Blessed John Henry Newman was born in London, the eldest of three sons and three daughters. He became an evangelical Oxford academic and priest in the Anglican Church of England. In 1845, Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He founded the Catholic University of Ireland which later became the University College, Dublin.  Newman died on August 11th, 1890 of pneumonia at the Birmingham Oratory. At the time of his death, he had been Protodeacon of the Holy Roman Church. The Protodeacon is the longest-serving Cardinal Deacon in the College of Cardinals. Newman was beatified on September 19th, 2010