St. Thomas More - Our Patron Saint
We especially love St. Thomas More because, like most of us, he was a lay person. A family man, happily married with four children, St. Thomas More led a lively household. Both famous scholars and poor neighbors were always welcome at his house. St. Thomas More served as a barrister, a member of Parliament, an officer in local government and finally after 1529, Lord Chancellor of England. The saint’s world also recognized him as a leader of the Renaissance. His best remembered work, Utopia, appeared in 1516.
We are comfortable with St. Thomas More because, like us, every morning he had to relate to teenagers, see to paying a bill, talk to his wife about dinner plans and see a guest off. Then he spent long days with little leisure tending to the duties of government and to writing. So we admire St. Thomas More for demonstrating that a person locked into the daily grind - like you and me - can become a saint.
St. Thomas More made his way through Renaissance politics with flawless integrity, until it occasioned his martyrdom. When King Henry VIII decided to divorce his wife and declared himself head of the Church in England, St. Thomas More opposed him. But he scrupulously obeyed the law, never speaking of “the King’s” great matter.” However when Henry required an oath of support, More refused. The king’s cronies arrested him, and left him to languish in prison. He was tried and condemned to death on July 1, 1535.
St. Thomas More’s words and behavior in the face of death may help us approach our death more peacefully. From prison he wrote Margaret, his eldest daughter, “Nothing can come but what God allows. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it might seem, it shall indeed be the best.” He also told her he was thankful for his circumstances: “I thank God, Meg, for I think God makes me a wanton and sets me on His lap and dandles me."
He also forgave the king’s men who condemned him to death. “I shall pray heartily, he said, “that though your lordships have now here on earth been judges of my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation.”
On St. Thomas More’s way to the scaffold, a troubled man greeted him. Years before the fellow had been healed of mental illness when St. Thomas More had promised to keep him in his prayers. Now he feared that without St. Thomas More’s prayers would relapse into severe depression. But St. Thomas More assured him that death would not stop his intercession. He said, “Go your way in peace, and pray for me, and I will not fail to pray for you. “ The saint evidently planned to stay busy in heaven.
On July 6, 1535, St. Thomas More was beheaded. Before his death, he eloquently characterized his life by declaring that he was “the king’s good servant - but God’s first.”
Adapted from Bert Ghezzi, Voices of the Saints