Feast day: June 22
Sts. Thomas More & John Fisher
England's Lord Chancellor and its holiest bishop, both beheaded by Henry VIII for refusing to deny the unity of the Church.
Thomas More was born in London in 1478 and rose to become one of the most brilliant men of his age — a lawyer, scholar, and statesman, friend of Erasmus and the leading English humanist, author of 'Utopia,' and a devoted family man famous for the warmth and learning of his household. A man of deep faith and ready wit, he rose in the service of King Henry VIII until, in 1529, he was made Lord Chancellor of England.
His conscience and his career collided over the king's determination to divorce his wife and to make himself, rather than the pope, the head of the Church in England. Unable in conscience to approve either, More resigned the chancellorship in 1532 and withdrew into private life, hoping his silence would protect him. But the king demanded not silence but assent, in the form of an oath acknowledging his supremacy over the Church.
More refused to swear it, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London for over a year, where he wrote works of great serenity and faith. Alongside him stood St. John Fisher, the bishop of Rochester — the only English bishop to resist the king — who was made a cardinal while a prisoner and beheaded a fortnight before him. Both are honored together on this day.
Tried on perjured testimony and condemned, More went to his execution on Tower Hill in 1535 with the courage and humor that marked his whole life, declaring himself 'the King's good servant, but God's first.' He and Fisher were canonized in 1935, and More is honored as a patron of statesmen, lawyers, and all who must answer to their conscience against the powers of the world.
More's last words on the scaffold: 'I die the King's good servant, but God's first.' He joked with his executioner on the way up.
“I die the King's good servant, but God's first.”
— Sts. Thomas More & John Fisher
Image: Hans Holbein the Younger (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/14689c.htm
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