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Description
St. Thomas More icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
September 1st 2016
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

“I do not care very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of me.”
~ St. Thomas More

“I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.”
~ St. Thomas More

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the release of A Man for All Seasons (released December 12, 1966), a great film about the life of St. Thomas More. Definitely one of my favorite movies! If you haven’t seen it before you should check it out! St. Thomas More also has a particularly special place in my heart because I chose him as my Confirmation Saint. I had read a novel about him prior to my Confirmation, and I was so inspired by his incredible courage, integrity and good humor that I knew I wanted to take him for one of my patrons. So I have a great daughterly affection for him. In any case, I based my own depiction of him off of the Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527) by Hans Holbein the Younger. In this icon, St. Thomas More wears a heavy fur-lined gown-coat over a red velvet shirt. He also wears the Collar of Esses, the golden chain of office with the Tudor Rose of Henry VIII that marks him as the Chancellor of England. Thomas More holds the crucifix (symbolizing the Faith, as well as the sharing of Christ’s sufferings in his own martyrdom) in front of the chain of office, symbolizing his remark as being “the king’s faithful servant, but God’s first.” The palm branch in his right hand also symbolizes his victorious martyrdom.

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Thomas More (February 7th 1477 – July 6th 1535 A.D.), was born in London to his father Sir John More and his mother Agnes Granger. His mother died when he was very young, but he had a great love and affection for his father, to whom he was particularly close. Sir John More was a lawyer by trade and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. As a child, Thomas showed a great aptitude for learning and was sent to St. Anthony’s School in London, at the age of seven. When he was about twelve or thirteen, he was sent as a page to serve at Lambeth Palace, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, the Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. Morton was very impressed by the boy’s sharp wit and genial character, and persuaded his reluctant father to have the boy sent to Oxford to get a liberal arts education.

Thomas was sent to Oxford University when he was about fourteen and studied there for two years. While in school, his father made frequent visits and gave him such a small allowance that Thomas was obliged to ask his father for money when he needed to get his shoes repaired. Thomas later was grateful for the way his father had kept him on a tight allowance, which forced him to focus completely on his studies and not get distracted by indulging in vain amusements. While at Oxford, he studied Greek, Latin, French, mathematics, history, and learned to play various musical instruments. At the age of sixteen, his father pulled him out of Oxford and had him sent to law school at New Inn, London. At eighteen, Thomas went to Lincoln’s Inn, and around 1501 (at the age of twenty-three) was called to the bar.

Left to himself, however, Thomas would have preferred his studies in the liberal arts, which interested him more than law. He wrote a number of poems in English and Latin and translated various works, read, studied, and wrote commentaries on the Fathers of the Church, all the while making friends with distinguished scholars and other learned men, such as Erasmus, Grocyn, Lilly, and Lincare. Fr. John Colet, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, also became an intimate friend of Thomas and later even became his confessor. Greatly esteemed by his colleagues, he was invited to deliver a series of lectures on St. Augustine’s City of God, which was attended by a number of learned scholars. It was during this period too that Thomas faced a vocational crisis in his life. He went to live with the Carthusians in the London Charterhouse and joined them in their prayers, vigils, fasts, and penances. It was at this time that he began wearing a penitential hairshirt. While he was very attracted to the fervor and holiness of the monks and priests of the Carthusians and Franciscans, he was also very much attracted to the idea of married life. With the counsel of his confessor John Colet, he discerned that God was not calling him to be a priest, but instead to be a husband and father.

After this crisis was overcome, he energetically pursued a career in law and in 1504, at the age of twenty-four, he became a member of Parliament. He married Jane Colt in 1505 and the couple had four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John. Theirs was a happy marriage, and Thomas enjoyed tutoring his young wife in music and literature. However, Jane died only six years later at the age of twenty-nine. With four young children under the age of six to take care of, Thomas decided that his children needed a mother, and so he married Alice Middleton, a widow seven years older than him who brought her own daughter Alice into the family. He also became the guardian of two young girls named Margaret Giggs and Anne Cresacre, whom he raised like his own daughters. Thomas was very affectionate towards his family and insisted on giving his daughters as good an education as was given to his son John. His eldest, Margaret, became a particularly accomplished scholar and was fluent in both Latin and Greek, while his adopted daughter Margaret Giggs excelled at albegra and arithmetic.

In the meantime, Thomas More’s career as a prominent lawyer and politician began taking off. In 1510, he became the Under-Sheriff of London, a position of great responsibility that he undertook with such great ability that he gained a reputation for his honesty and justice. In 1514, he became Master of Requests (a position in which he judged the cases of the poor) and soon after became a member of the King’s Privy Council in which he directly advised the king. Cardinal Wolsey, the Archbishop of York, picked him to be part of an embassy to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In 1516, he wrote his famous Utopia along with other works. He was greatly esteemed by the king and in 1521 was knighted and made the under-secretary of the Exchequer. In 1523, he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, was made High Steward of Cambridge University in 1525 and later also held the Chancellorship for the Duchy of Lancaster. After Cardinal Wolsey failed to secure Henry VIII’s annulment, he quickly fell out of favor and the king stripped him of all of his offices (except for the Archbishopric of York). Thomas More was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1529 (the first laymen to have ever held the position) and became one of the most influential and important of Henry VIII’s advisors.

England by this time had become embroiled in the polemical religious war between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church. In 1521, Henry VIII (with the help of Thomas More) wrote a theological treatise titled, In Defense of the Seven Sacraments in which the English King defended the Catholic Church and her doctrines. It was after the publication of this treatise that the Pope conferred the title “Defender of the Faith” on him. Luther later replied in his Against Henry, King of the English, and in the king’s stead, Thomas More wrote Responsio ad Lutherum in 1522. As Lord Chancellor, Thomas More enforced the secular laws against heretics and the spreading of heretical tracts. Protestant writers (both in his time and later) painted him as an energetic and gleeful torturer of heretics, an allegation that More soundly refuted in his Apologia (1533).

More was to only hold the post of lord Chancellorship for two years. The King by this point was obsessed with obtaining an annulment from Queen Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Having requested an annulment and being refused, Henry VIII decided to take matters into his own hands and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. The King did away with all of the clergy who opposed him, and he had Parliament pass a law that made it a treasonous crime to maintain that there was a higher temporal and religious leader in England than the King of England himself. He forced Parliament to say that the Pope had no temporal or spiritual jurisdiction over the English people. In 1531, the king issued a decree that required the people of England to accept the succession of Anne Boleyn’s children to the throne as well as acknowledge Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church in England. Thomas More agreed to acknowledge Anne Boleyn’s children, but could not in good conscience accept Henry as having more spiritual authority than the Pope. He also refused to support Henry’s unjust divorce of Queen Catherine of Aragon, so in 1532 he resigned as Lord Chancellor.

When Thomas More did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533, Henry was incensed and was determined to destroy Thomas if he refused to submit. In March of 1534, the Act of Succession was passed and on April 13th Thomas was summoned to take the oath in which the authority of the Pope was repudiated. He refused, and was arrested n charges of treason and taken to the Tower of London. While there, More composed A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, and wrote letters of love and encouragement to his family. Despite his sufferings, he remained cheerful and joked with his family when they tearfully came to visit him. Thomas Cromwell and Richard Rich visited him in prison to wring a submission or confession out of him, but both failed in the task and More maintained his silence on the topic.

On July 1st 1535, Thomas More was brought before a panel of twenty judges (which included some of Anne Boleyn’s relatives) and charged with high treason. By this time, More was so ill and weak that he had to sit during the proceedings, but his mind remained characteristically sharp and he defended himself ably. The prosecution was headed by Thomas Cromwell, who brought Richard Rich forward to give testimony that Thomas More had confided his opinion to him during one of his visits in the Tower. Thomas More denied this charge so strenuously that the other “witnesses” who had been brought up to support Rich’s assertion, when asked, said that they had been too busy to listen to the conversation, and so avoided perjuring themselves. However, the king wanted Thomas More convicted, so after only fifteen minutes, the jury returned and found More guilty of the charge of high treason. It was at this point that Thomas More fully disclosed his mind to the court and maintained that the king of England could never be head of the Church, and that that prerogative belonged solely to the successors of St. Peter. Thomas More was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, but later this sentence was commuted to beheading on Tower Hill. On his return to the Tower after this sentence, his daughter Margaret pushed her way through the crowds to embrace her father and wept openly. Other friends of his who came to comfort him found themselves so heartbroken and shaken that Thomas ended up comforting them.

On the morning of July 6th 1535, Thomas More was taken to the scaffold at Tower Hill to be beheaded. His adopted daughter, Margaret Giggs was the only family member present at his execution. Even to the end, Thomas was full of good humor and joked with the people around him. As he left the Tower, a woman in the crowd called out to him, asking for her evidence for a court case that she had given him when he was in office without which she would lose her case. Thomas replied to her: “Good woman, have patience a little while, for the king is so good to me that even within this half hour he will discharge me of all business, and will help you himself.” While walking up the scaffold, he asked a sheriff for a hand up and said, “When I come down again, let me shift for myself as well as I can.” As he laid his head down on the block, he told the executioner to wait just a moment so he could move his beard out of the way, as it had not been convicted of treason. Thomas More was executed at the age of 58. His body was buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave at the Tower of London. His head was impaled on a pike overlooking London Bridge for a month until his daughter Margaret managed to obtain it before it was thrown in the River Thames. The skull was later buried in the Roper family vault at St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury.

When he heard of Thomas More’s death, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, remarked, “If I had been master of such a servant, of whose doing I myself have had many years no small experience, I would rather have lost the best city in my dominions than lose such a worthy councilor.” Robert Whittington, in his Vulgaria (1520) wrote this of Thomas More: “A man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.” Thomas More, along with Bishop John Fisher and a number of other English martyrs were beatified on December 29th 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. On May 19th 1935, Pope Pius XI canonized John Fisher and Thomas More. The latter’s feast day was moved to June 22nd to be commemorated on the day of John Fisher’s martyrdom. Saint Pope John Paul II declared Thomas More the heavenly patron of statesmen and politicians on October 31st 2000.

“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. Either he shall keep the king in that gracious frame of mind to continue to do me no harm, or else, if it be his pleasure that for my other sins I suffer in this case as I shall not deserve, then his grace shall give me the strength to bear it patiently, and perhaps even gladly.

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 if he permits me to play Saint Peter further and to fall to the ground and to swear and forswear, may God our Lord in his tender mercy keep me from this, and let me lose if it so happen, and never win thereby! Still, if this should happen, afterward I trust that in his goodness he will look on me with pity as he did upon Saint Peter, and make me stand up again and confess the truth of my conscience afresh and endure here the shame and harm of my own fault.

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 from St. Thomas More to his daughter Margaret

The Feast of St. Thomas More is celebrated on June 22nd.

St. Thomas More is the patron saint of lawyers, politicians, and statesmen.

O God, who in martyrdom
have brought true faith to its highest expression,
graciously grant that, strengthened through the intercession
of Saint Thomas More, we may confirm by the witness of our life
the Faith we profess with our lips.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Description
St. Thomas More icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
September 1st 2016
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

“I do not care very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of me.”
~ St. Thomas More

“I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.”
~ St. Thomas More

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the release of A Man for All Seasons (released December 12, 1966), a great film about the life of St. Thomas More. Definitely one of my favorite movies! If you haven’t seen it before you should check it out! St. Thomas More also has a particularly special place in my heart because I chose him as my Confirmation Saint. I had read a novel about him prior to my Confirmation, and I was so inspired by his incredible courage, integrity and good humor that I knew I wanted to take him for one of my patrons. So I have a great daughterly affection for him. In any case, I based my own depiction of him off of the Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527) by Hans Holbein the Younger. In this icon, St. Thomas More wears a heavy fur-lined gown-coat over a red velvet shirt. He also wears the Collar of Esses, the golden chain of office with the Tudor Rose of Henry VIII that marks him as the Chancellor of England. Thomas More holds the crucifix (symbolizing the Faith, as well as the sharing of Christ’s sufferings in his own martyrdom) in front of the chain of office, symbolizing his remark as being “the king’s faithful servant, but God’s first.” The palm branch in his right hand also symbolizes his victorious martyrdom.

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Thomas More (February 7th 1477 – July 6th 1535 A.D.), was born in London to his father Sir John More and his mother Agnes Granger. His mother died when he was very young, but he had a great love and affection for his father, to whom he was particularly close. Sir John More was a lawyer by trade and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. As a child, Thomas showed a great aptitude for learning and was sent to St. Anthony’s School in London, at the age of seven. When he was about twelve or thirteen, he was sent as a page to serve at Lambeth Palace, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, the Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. Morton was very impressed by the boy’s sharp wit and genial character, and persuaded his reluctant father to have the boy sent to Oxford to get a liberal arts education.

Thomas was sent to Oxford University when he was about fourteen and studied there for two years. While in school, his father made frequent visits and gave him such a small allowance that Thomas was obliged to ask his father for money when he needed to get his shoes repaired. Thomas later was grateful for the way his father had kept him on a tight allowance, which forced him to focus completely on his studies and not get distracted by indulging in vain amusements. While at Oxford, he studied Greek, Latin, French, mathematics, history, and learned to play various musical instruments. At the age of sixteen, his father pulled him out of Oxford and had him sent to law school at New Inn, London. At eighteen, Thomas went to Lincoln’s Inn, and around 1501 (at the age of twenty-three) was called to the bar.

Left to himself, however, Thomas would have preferred his studies in the liberal arts, which interested him more than law. He wrote a number of poems in English and Latin and translated various works, read, studied, and wrote commentaries on the Fathers of the Church, all the while making friends with distinguished scholars and other learned men, such as Erasmus, Grocyn, Lilly, and Lincare. Fr. John Colet, the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, also became an intimate friend of Thomas and later even became his confessor. Greatly esteemed by his colleagues, he was invited to deliver a series of lectures on St. Augustine’s City of God, which was attended by a number of learned scholars. It was during this period too that Thomas faced a vocational crisis in his life. He went to live with the Carthusians in the London Charterhouse and joined them in their prayers, vigils, fasts, and penances. It was at this time that he began wearing a penitential hairshirt. While he was very attracted to the fervor and holiness of the monks and priests of the Carthusians and Franciscans, he was also very much attracted to the idea of married life. With the counsel of his confessor John Colet, he discerned that God was not calling him to be a priest, but instead to be a husband and father.

After this crisis was overcome, he energetically pursued a career in law and in 1504, at the age of twenty-four, he became a member of Parliament. He married Jane Colt in 1505 and the couple had four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John. Theirs was a happy marriage, and Thomas enjoyed tutoring his young wife in music and literature. However, Jane died only six years later at the age of twenty-nine. With four young children under the age of six to take care of, Thomas decided that his children needed a mother, and so he married Alice Middleton, a widow seven years older than him who brought her own daughter Alice into the family. He also became the guardian of two young girls named Margaret Giggs and Anne Cresacre, whom he raised like his own daughters. Thomas was very affectionate towards his family and insisted on giving his daughters as good an education as was given to his son John. His eldest, Margaret, became a particularly accomplished scholar and was fluent in both Latin and Greek, while his adopted daughter Margaret Giggs excelled at albegra and arithmetic.

In the meantime, Thomas More’s career as a prominent lawyer and politician began taking off. In 1510, he became the Under-Sheriff of London, a position of great responsibility that he undertook with such great ability that he gained a reputation for his honesty and justice. In 1514, he became Master of Requests (a position in which he judged the cases of the poor) and soon after became a member of the King’s Privy Council in which he directly advised the king. Cardinal Wolsey, the Archbishop of York, picked him to be part of an embassy to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In 1516, he wrote his famous Utopia along with other works. He was greatly esteemed by the king and in 1521 was knighted and made the under-secretary of the Exchequer. In 1523, he was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, was made High Steward of Cambridge University in 1525 and later also held the Chancellorship for the Duchy of Lancaster. After Cardinal Wolsey failed to secure Henry VIII’s annulment, he quickly fell out of favor and the king stripped him of all of his offices (except for the Archbishopric of York). Thomas More was appointed Lord Chancellor in 1529 (the first laymen to have ever held the position) and became one of the most influential and important of Henry VIII’s advisors.

England by this time had become embroiled in the polemical religious war between Martin Luther and the Catholic Church. In 1521, Henry VIII (with the help of Thomas More) wrote a theological treatise titled, In Defense of the Seven Sacraments in which the English King defended the Catholic Church and her doctrines. It was after the publication of this treatise that the Pope conferred the title “Defender of the Faith” on him. Luther later replied in his Against Henry, King of the English, and in the king’s stead, Thomas More wrote Responsio ad Lutherum in 1522. As Lord Chancellor, Thomas More enforced the secular laws against heretics and the spreading of heretical tracts. Protestant writers (both in his time and later) painted him as an energetic and gleeful torturer of heretics, an allegation that More soundly refuted in his Apologia (1533).

More was to only hold the post of lord Chancellorship for two years. The King by this point was obsessed with obtaining an annulment from Queen Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn. Having requested an annulment and being refused, Henry VIII decided to take matters into his own hands and declared himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. The King did away with all of the clergy who opposed him, and he had Parliament pass a law that made it a treasonous crime to maintain that there was a higher temporal and religious leader in England than the King of England himself. He forced Parliament to say that the Pope had no temporal or spiritual jurisdiction over the English people. In 1531, the king issued a decree that required the people of England to accept the succession of Anne Boleyn’s children to the throne as well as acknowledge Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church in England. Thomas More agreed to acknowledge Anne Boleyn’s children, but could not in good conscience accept Henry as having more spiritual authority than the Pope. He also refused to support Henry’s unjust divorce of Queen Catherine of Aragon, so in 1532 he resigned as Lord Chancellor.

When Thomas More did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn in 1533, Henry was incensed and was determined to destroy Thomas if he refused to submit. In March of 1534, the Act of Succession was passed and on April 13th Thomas was summoned to take the oath in which the authority of the Pope was repudiated. He refused, and was arrested n charges of treason and taken to the Tower of London. While there, More composed A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, and wrote letters of love and encouragement to his family. Despite his sufferings, he remained cheerful and joked with his family when they tearfully came to visit him. Thomas Cromwell and Richard Rich visited him in prison to wring a submission or confession out of him, but both failed in the task and More maintained his silence on the topic.

On July 1st 1535, Thomas More was brought before a panel of twenty judges (which included some of Anne Boleyn’s relatives) and charged with high treason. By this time, More was so ill and weak that he had to sit during the proceedings, but his mind remained characteristically sharp and he defended himself ably. The prosecution was headed by Thomas Cromwell, who brought Richard Rich forward to give testimony that Thomas More had confided his opinion to him during one of his visits in the Tower. Thomas More denied this charge so strenuously that the other “witnesses” who had been brought up to support Rich’s assertion, when asked, said that they had been too busy to listen to the conversation, and so avoided perjuring themselves. However, the king wanted Thomas More convicted, so after only fifteen minutes, the jury returned and found More guilty of the charge of high treason. It was at this point that Thomas More fully disclosed his mind to the court and maintained that the king of England could never be head of the Church, and that that prerogative belonged solely to the successors of St. Peter. Thomas More was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, but later this sentence was commuted to beheading on Tower Hill. On his return to the Tower after this sentence, his daughter Margaret pushed her way through the crowds to embrace her father and wept openly. Other friends of his who came to comfort him found themselves so heartbroken and shaken that Thomas ended up comforting them.

On the morning of July 6th 1535, Thomas More was taken to the scaffold at Tower Hill to be beheaded. His adopted daughter, Margaret Giggs was the only family member present at his execution. Even to the end, Thomas was full of good humor and joked with the people around him. As he left the Tower, a woman in the crowd called out to him, asking for her evidence for a court case that she had given him when he was in office without which she would lose her case. Thomas replied to her: “Good woman, have patience a little while, for the king is so good to me that even within this half hour he will discharge me of all business, and will help you himself.” While walking up the scaffold, he asked a sheriff for a hand up and said, “When I come down again, let me shift for myself as well as I can.” As he laid his head down on the block, he told the executioner to wait just a moment so he could move his beard out of the way, as it had not been convicted of treason. Thomas More was executed at the age of 58. His body was buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave at the Tower of London. His head was impaled on a pike overlooking London Bridge for a month until his daughter Margaret managed to obtain it before it was thrown in the River Thames. The skull was later buried in the Roper family vault at St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury.

When he heard of Thomas More’s death, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, remarked, “If I had been master of such a servant, of whose doing I myself have had many years no small experience, I would rather have lost the best city in my dominions than lose such a worthy councilor.” Robert Whittington, in his Vulgaria (1520) wrote this of Thomas More: “A man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.” Thomas More, along with Bishop John Fisher and a number of other English martyrs were beatified on December 29th 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. On May 19th 1935, Pope Pius XI canonized John Fisher and Thomas More. The latter’s feast day was moved to June 22nd to be commemorated on the day of John Fisher’s martyrdom. Saint Pope John Paul II declared Thomas More the heavenly patron of statesmen and politicians on October 31st 2000.

“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. Either he shall keep the king in that gracious frame of mind to continue to do me no harm, or else, if it be his pleasure that for my other sins I suffer in this case as I shall not deserve, then his grace shall give me the strength to bear it patiently, and perhaps even gladly.

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 if he permits me to play Saint Peter further and to fall to the ground and to swear and forswear, may God our Lord in his tender mercy keep me from this, and let me lose if it so happen, and never win thereby! Still, if this should happen, afterward I trust that in his goodness he will look on me with pity as he did upon Saint Peter, and make me stand up again and confess the truth of my conscience afresh and endure here the shame and harm of my own fault.

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 from St. Thomas More to his daughter Margaret

The Feast of St. Thomas More is celebrated on June 22nd.

St. Thomas More is the patron saint of lawyers, politicians, and statesmen.

O God, who in martyrdom
have brought true faith to its highest expression,
graciously grant that, strengthened through the intercession
of Saint Thomas More, we may confirm by the witness of our life
the Faith we profess with our lips.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.