St. Thomas More was born at London in 1478. After a thorough grounding in religion and the classics, he entered Oxford to study law. Upon leaving the university he embarked on a legal career which took him to Parliament. In 1505, he married his beloved Jane Colt who bore him four children, and when she died at a young age, he married a widow, Alice Middleton, to be a mother for his young children. A wit and a reformer, this learned man numbered Bishops and scholars among his friends, and by 1516 wrote his world-famous book "Utopia". He attracted the attention of Henry VIII who appointed him to a succession of high posts and missions, and finally made him Lord Chancellor in 1529. However, he resigned in 1532, at the height of his career and reputation, when Henry persisted in holding his own opinions regarding marriage and the supremacy of the Pope. The rest of his life was spent in writing mostly in defense of the Church. In 1534, with his close friend, St. John Fisher, he refused to render allegiance to the King as the Head of the Church of England and was confined to the Tower. Fifteen months later, and nine days after St. John Fisher's execution, he was tried and convicted of treason. He told the court that he could not go against his conscience and wished his judges that "we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation." And on the scaffold, he told the crowd of spectators that he was dying as "the King's good servant-but God's first." He was beheaded on July 6, 1535. His feast day is June 22nd.
"What does it avail to know that there is a God, which you not only believe by Faith, but also know by reason: what does it avail that you know Him if you think little of Him?"
"What men call fame is, after all, but a very windy thing. A man thinks that many are praising him, and talking of him alone, and yet they spend but a very small part of the day thinking of him, being occupied with things of their own."
"Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God. By the merits of his bitter passion joined to mine and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, his bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides. I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning. And finally, Margaret, I know this well: that without my fault he will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with good hope commit myself wholly to him. And if he permits me to perish for my faults, then I shall serve as praise for his justice. But in good faith, Meg, I trust that his tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe and make me commend his mercy. And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best." - from a letter written by Saint Thomas More from prison to his daughter Margaret
"If I am distracted, Holy Communion helps me become recollected. If opportunities are offered by each day to offend my God, I arm myself anew each day for the combat by reception of the Eucharist. If I am in need of special light and prudence in order to discharge my burdensome duties, I draw nigh to my Savior and seek counsel and light from Him." --Saint Thomas More
"These things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us Thy grace to labor for." --Saint Thomas More.
"It is a shorter thing and sooner done, to write heresies, than to answer them." --Saint Thomas More.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More rose rapidly in public life despite his lack of ambition. He was a renowned lawyer and elected to Parliament in 1504 (at age 22). In 1510, he was appointed Undersheriff of London; 1518, Secretary to Henry VIII; 1521, he was knighted; 1523, chosen Speaker of Parliament; 1529, Lord Chancellor in succession to Cardinal Wolsey. Nevertheless, he continued to read, study, and write, and is known more as a scholar than as a jurist. Yet he was realistic and wrote in Utopia (1516), "philosophy had no place among kings....it is not possible for all things to be well, unless all men were good, which I think will not be this good many years."
Next Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made it high treason to refuse to accept the king as the only head on earth of the Church of England. More was brought to trial on the perjured testimony of Richard Rich and defended himself against the inferred act of treason. He was convicted of high treason, and martyred for his steadfast defense of the indissolubility of marriage and the supremacy of the pope. After the sentence was issued, he broke his silence. On the scaffold, he said simply, "I have been ever the king's good and loyal servant, but God's first"
"Doubtless Christ could have caused the apostles not to sleep at all, but to stay awake, if that had been what He wished in an absolute and unqualified sense. But actually His wish was qualified by a condition -- namely that they themselves wish to do so, and wish it so effectually that each of them do his very best to comply with the outward command Christ Himself gave and to cooperate with the promptings of His inward assistance. In this way He also wishes for all men to be saved and for no one to suffer eternal torment, that is, always provided that we conform to His most loving will and do not set ourselves against it through our own willful malice. If someone stubbornly insists on doing this, God does not want to waft him off to heaven against his will, as if He were in need of our services there and could not continue His glorious reign without our support. Indeed, if He could not reign without us, He would immediately punish many offenses which now, out of consideration for us, He tolerates and overlooks for a long time to see if His kindness and patience will bring us to repent. But we meanwhile abuse this great mercy of His by adding sins to sins, thus heaping up for ourselves (as the apostle says) a treasure of wrath on the day of wrath (Rom 2:5)."
"Nevertheless, such is God's kindness that even when we are negligent and slumbering on the pillow of our sins, He disturbs us from time to time, shakes us, strikes us, and does His best to wake us up by means of tribulations. But still, even though He thus proves Himself to be most loving even in His anger, most of us in our gross human stupidity misinterpret His action and imagine that such a great benefit is an injury, whereas actually (if we have any sense) we should feel bound to pray frequently and fervently that whenever we wander away from Him He may use blows to drive us back to the right way, even though we are unwilling and struggle against Him."
"Thus we must first pray that we may see the way and with the Church we must say to God, 'From blindness of heart, deliver us, O Lord.' And with the prophet we must say, "Teach me to do your will" and "Show me your ways and teach me your paths." Then we must intensely desire to run after you eagerly, O God, in the odor of your ointments, in the most sweet scent of your Spirit. But if we grow weary along the way (as we almost always do) and lag so far behind that we barely manage to follow at a distance, let us immediately say to God, "Take my right hand" and "Lead me along your path."
"Then if we are so overcome by weariness that we no longer have the heart to go on, if we are so soft and lazy that we are about to stop altogether, let us beg God to drag us along even as we struggle not to go. Finally, if we resist when He draws on us gently, and are stiff-necked against the will of God, against our own salvation, utterly irrational like horses and mules which have no intellects, we ought to beseech God humbly in the most fitting words of the prophet: "Hold my jaws hard, O God, with a bridle and bit when I do not draw near to you" (Ps 32:9)."
--Saint Thomas More in The Sadness of Christ
[All text is from "Way Of Living Website" where the quotes are better referenced, also you can get more (no pun intended:0) as well as a list of his writings at the Catholic Encyclopedia]
[All text is from "Way Of Living Website" where the quotes are better referenced, also you can get more (no pun intended:0) as well as a list of his writings at the Catholic Encyclopedia]
No comments:
Post a Comment