MIRACULOUS MIRACLES^™

Prayer — Prayers of the Saints

Lead, Kindly Light (The Pillar of the Cloud)

by St. John Henry Newman

'One step enough for me.' The prayer Newman wrote at sea in 1833, becalmed and sick off Sardinia, twelve years before he became a Catholic.

The Prayer

English · Original

Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on;
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on.
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on.
I loved the garish day; and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost a while.

When the Prayer is Said

In uncertainty and darkness; at funerals; on 9 October, the saint's feast.

History & Background

Newman fell dangerously ill in Sicily in the spring of 1833, and on the orange boat that carried him home, becalmed for a week in the Strait of Bonifacio, he wrote these three stanzas. He was thirty-two, an Anglican clergyman, and twelve years from Rome; he did not know where he was being led, and the prayer says so. 'I loved the garish day' is his own confession; 'one step enough for me' is the rule he kept from then on. He titled it The Pillar of the Cloud, after the guidance of Israel in the desert.

Sung to Dykes's tune Lux Benigna from 1865, it became one of the best-known hymns in the English language and was sung at Newman's own funeral in 1890. He was canonised on 13 October 2019. The text is that of Newman's Verses on Various Occasions as reprinted in 1904.

Related Saints

St. John Henry Newman

February 21, 1801 – August 11, 1890

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