John Mason Neale

Today in our Anglican Calendar as set out in Common Worship, we make a commemoration of one John Mason Neale.  If you read the small print in the hymn book, you will find him to be the author or translator from the original tongue of many hymns.  In the hymn book used here, the first one I found was Christ is made the sure foundation which he translated from the Latin.  

John Mason Neale lived in the nineteenth century.  He was the son of an Anglican priest of Evangelical leaning, though his father died when John was just five years old.  A gifted pupil, he was granted a scholarship to Trinity College Cambridge, though his distaste for Mathematics meant that despite his being the best Classical Scholar of his year, he graduated only with an ordinary degree.  

He was up at Cambridge in a time of great ecclesial ferment – the Oxford Movement which did so much to bring new life and dignity, beauty and reverence to worship began in 1833 with John Keble’s ‘Assize Sermon’ preached in the University Church.  Neale was ordained deacon and priest and offered the living of Crawley in Sussex.  But his health, never strong, gave way and he spent time recovering in Madeira with his wife.  On his return to England, he was made Warden of Sackville College in East Grinstead where he remained for the remainder of his life.  He had been offered a post at S. Nicholas Guildford, but the Bishop of Winchester refused to license him as he was a founder of what became the Ecclesiological Society – influenced by the Catholic movement in the Church. It was not to be the only conflict which he had with ecclesiastical superiors.

Neale had been active with his pen, however.  He wrote poetry as well as hymns (no less than one eighth of the hymns in Hymns Ancient and Modern were written by him) and won the prestigious Seatonian prize for sacred verse on eleven occasions.  He wrote prolifically and on a varied of subjects theological, liturgical and in the area of ecclesiastical architecture and furnishings – many of these works published after his death.  

But in England, the Church gave him neither credit nor preferment.  His doctorate came from Harvard in the United States, his offer of preferment came from Scotland – he was offered the Provostship of S. Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth, and acclaim came from Russia where in 1860 the Patriarch of Moscow sent him a very valuable copy of the Liturgy of the Starovertzi with an affectionate inscription.  In England his work continued in a variety of ways including his work of founding a religious order of sisters at East Grinstead which continues to this day.  Largely, however, he suffered a great deal in England, a suffering he received with great patience and kindness.  

Why this should have been is difficult for us to understand now, though I suspect that it was largely due to the heretical Deism which was so widespread amongst influential leaders of the 19th century Church of England.  They preferred God to be far-off, out of reach and out of touch, rather than the incarnate God accessible to us through Sacramental worship proclaimed by the Oxford Reformers.  Neale was a poet, and poetry is able to embrace paradox and bring a clarity of spiritual vision that the rationalist Deists hated.  

Well of course it is easy to get things wrong.  Look at Peter in today’s Gospel reading.  Right and Wrong at the same time!  Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.  God has revealed this truth to him about Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.  But alas he is a child of his age and culture, where the truly righteous do not suffer.  So Jesus has to correct him, to open his eyes to the full truth.  That received wisdom about the fate of the righteous not suffering is untrue – at least in the sense of what happens to them in this life.  Jesus tells Peter that such thoughts come from Satan, the mis-leading angel of light.  Divine things are not ethereal things.  Divine reality is not virtual reality!  Divine reality involves us in bringing about justice and liberation, compassion and mercy with the concomitant burden of suffering.  That was Christ’s lesson for Peter – and ultimately Peter followed him along the way of the Cross.  As have millions since, one way or another.  

Including poet, priest, and scholar John Mason Neale in his particular way with his particular gifts, offered to God, blessed by God, and a blessing to many since within the life of Christ’s continuing Incarnate life of the Church.  Though at the time, largely ignored.