Drawing strength of purpose from the Holy Spirit

Charterhouse Chronicle Frank Longford
,. ESUS CHRIST said to us: "When I
was in prison, you came to me" and "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me." Those of us who have visited prisoners for many years, I suppose, like to imagine that they are helping a prisoner. But just occasionally they gain more inspiration from the visit than the prisoner is likely to receive.
On June 16 I spent an hour with Jonathan Aitken in Belmarsh Prison and came away more strengthened than he could possibly have been. I have never met a prisoner who was so aware of the presence of God. Some would say that the Holy Spirit was actively at work in him but I am never happy with such language. He is reading for a theology degree. His present intention is to become a clergyman when he comes out of prison. He has started a small Bible class among the prisoners. All this is quite unique in my long experience. He has got certain advantages denied to other prisoners. He has had in a week or so 700 letters of sympathy or support. His fellow prisoners all convicted of serious offences are showing much warmth towards him. They seek his help but in all sorts of small ways show how glad they are to have him with them.
He is a first-class writer. His large book on Richard Nixon was much admired by myself, the author of a small one. His book about recent happenings will appear in the autumn and undoubtedly he is gaining material in the best sense from his present time in a top security prison. But apart from all that, the qualities that made him a Cabinet Minister, with some talk of his becoming Prime Minister, give him the indefmable mark of a national leader. And so one asks oneself whether he will in fact be able to do for prisoners what so many of us have tried to do over the years with limited success. He will have the inestimable advantage of having been through it. In a worldly sense his career might seemed to have finished. Even in a wordly sense he may only have just begun. In a spiritual sense I do not presume to set a limit to it.
He is learning New Testament Greek. He is reading Thomas 'a Kempis. I read the beginning of the Imitation of Christ before visiting him. I ventured to suggest that there was something self-centred about that wonderful book which worried me. He was well aware of what I had in mind but seemed to be confident of drawing from his own experience of God a renewed dedication to his fellow men and women. Every Christian must pray that he is given the strength to persevere and bring many others with him to Christ.
WE MUST all be happy that Cardinal Hume has been escorted on his way by such overwhelming admiration from the British people of all denominations and none. I have paid a poor tribute to him once or twice recently in these columns. I have quoted my son, Patrick, who selected him when he was 15 at
Ampleforth as his confessor, out of 70 monks. Even then he was thought of as a holy man apart. Another son, Michael, recalls that not long ago Cardinal Hume confirmed one of his daughters at St Mary's College, Ascot. Michael, now a Deputy Secretary in the Cabinet Office and a particularly shrewd observer, noticed the Cardinal's instant rapport with the young people.
A grandchild of mine, Casper, now a promising young musician, was a pupil at the Westminster Cathedral Choir School. Cardinal Hume used to pass through the school daily on his way from the cathedral to his house. Caspar's father recalls the way in which he became an honoured member of the community. So when my son, Patrick, spotted something holy in him many years earlier, he was near the mark.
My daughter, Antonia, is the authoress of a book on the Gunpowder Plot, which has done much to remove the idea that it was a piece of papist treachery. She thinks of Cardinal Hume as a wonderful healer: "He has done more than anyone to heal the wounds of the Gunpowder Plot". She points out that for centuries afterwards there was a tendency to regard English Catholics as dangerous foreigners. Cardinal Wiseman, the first English Cardinal, was burnt in effigy. I reminded her that an official booklet on the House of Lords, published in 1947, placed a star against the names of Catholic peers. Duff Cooper, later Minister for Information, recalled in his memoirs that when he first tried to stand for Parliament, he was only asked two questions: are you a Catholic or a Jew?
Today, we have a Prime Minister who goes to Mass every Sunday, rhose wife is a Catholic, whose children attend a Catholic school. Few would be upset if, as so many of us hope and pray, he becomes a Catholic in the near future.
No man has brought about this immense change in my lifetime, but no one man has done half as much as Cardinal Hume. Of all the fine things said about him in the past few days, perhaps Tony Blair said the best one: "He was goodness personified." I myself fall back on memorable lines, which I have amended slightly to spare his blushes: "When the high hope we magnify And the true vision celebrate And look on greatness passing by Ourselves are great."