Life is hard, and it doesn’t always go according to plan. Those moments can be filled with sweat, tears, blood, sleepless nights, anxiety, and even temptation away from hope and toward despair. While we can feel slight or crippling loneliness in such moments, the reality is that suffering, difficulties, and hardships are all things we humans experience. Yes, you will find friends’ smiles and victories on social media, but remember that the posts not shared and the events not photographed include hardships.
I have found myself in moments of prolonged suffering and difficulty throughout my adulthood. To be honest, I am still in it. Yet, I have found ever greater depths of peace and joy in this stormy sea as I learn to better surrender all to God and trust in Him. In these more recent years, my teacher has been St. John Henry Newman and his prayerful poem “Lead, Kindly Light.”
St. John Henry Newman is a saint, theologian, and the most recently declared Doctor of the Church (November 1st, 2025). Born in 1801, he wrote the poetic prayer “Lead, Kindly Light” as the fruit of his own surrender during difficulty.
It all began at the end of 1832. Newman traveled throughout Europe, even becoming more exposed to the Catholic Faith during his Anglican years. While in Sicily, he nearly died due to illness. Shortly afterwards, he penned “Lead, Kindly Light.”
Looking back on it now, it is clear that part of God’s plan that he speaks of was to one day go from being an Anglican priest to a Catholic cardinal. His entrance into the fullness of the Catholic Church came at great cost to Newman: his job, friends, other relationships, and his notable status within British society. This would be just one of many seasons in his life in which he would be called upon to deepen his surrender and trust.
Let’s begin reflecting on this prayer by looking at its second stanza or verse. Here he recognizes that he hasn’t always trusted the Lord, “nor prayed that Thou / Shouldst lead me on.” Newman has the humility to recognize that he has sometimes lacked trust. This humility allows him to pinpoint some of the causes: “Pride ruled my will” and his disordered love for the “garish day.” How often have we struggled with a pride that approaches life as centered around us and a preference for the worldly? Like Newman, we would prefer “to choose and see my path,” to be able to plan and control, but we are invited to join the saintly theologian to change our ways and pray, “but now, Lead Thou me on!”
Now looking at the first stanza of “Lead, Kindly Light,” to let go of our need to control does not mean to deny that we are still faced with challenges “amid th’ encircling gloom” and the dark night. When faced with these, we recognize that we are “far from home” in terms of how we would like things to be, but also that the challenges of this world mean we are still not yet in the fullness of our heavenly home. As we continue on this journey, surrendering our pride to God and trusting where He leads mean that we don’t need to obsess about the future—a temptation that the fictional demon Screwtape encouraged in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Simply saying “yes” to God at this moment is enough. In Newman’s beautiful words, “I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.”
Not denying suffering, difficulty, or the unknown, Newman shows us that we can still be renewed in our faith, hope, and love for God. We can wake up to see the ways in which the Lord has “blest” us and know two things about the future: our difficulties aren’t over, but the Lord is still with us and will lead us. With trust and surrender, this means that one day the challenges will end, the night will be gone. We will then be “home” and be reunited with our brothers and sisters of the Kindly Light, those with whom we suffered a variety of types of separation.
As Catholics we often name things by the opening words, like the “Our Father” or “Glory Be.” Yet, the technical name for “Lead, Kindly Light” is “The Pillar of the Cloud.” This title adds an extra layer of meaning. It refers to God’s gift of a pillar of cloud to lead His chosen people Israel through the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. Despite the difficulties, their sins, the loss of loved ones, the unknowns, and the difficulties in trusting, God remained with them and provided them a way forward to their journey’s destination.
To pray this prayer with Newman is also to realize we are part of a much greater story, a much greater plan, with roots in Salvation History. God is inviting us into freedom from daily forms of slavery, helping us in our journey, and asking us to trust Him as he brings us through the Way, Jesus Christ (Jn. 14:6), to our heavenly “home.”
Since we travel in this Way who is Christ, as we come to grow in surrender and trust while in this world, we discover something beautifully amazing! That place of surrender and trust is a foretaste of that “home.” As St. Catherine of Sienna noted, the road to heaven is heavenly. Surely St. John Henry Newman realized this in a special way when he became Catholic in 1845 and in a fuller way when he died in 1890.
What foretaste of our heavenly home is the Kindly Lord leading us into today through surrender and trust? Perhaps to discover and receive this foretaste, we simply must begin by praying with our brother and friend, “Lead Thou me on!”
Photo by Ray Fragapane on Unsplash
