Catholic Transcript Online

Summer provides for some people more time for reflection, for looking at the big picture, for attaining new insights on fundamental values.

A few weeks ago, I enjoyed a particularly blessed summer afternoon. I visited the Beinecke Rare Book Library of Yale University. It contains the prayer book (actually two books bound together) which Saint Thomas More used in prison, the Tower of London, as he was awaiting his execution.

We remember the history. Saint Thomas More, brilliant lawyer, scholar, husband, father, theologian, Chancellor of England and close friend of King Henry VIII, could not support Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn. Neither could he acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in England, breaking with the Pope and splintering the Church.

Saint Thomas More refused, therefore, to swear to the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy. He was accused of treason; was committed in 1534 to the Tower of London, where he remained for 16 months; was tried and convicted on July 1, 1535; and was beheaded on July 6.

To read through the prayer book – a Latin Book of Hours and a liturgical Latin Psalter – is a profoundly religious experience. It is all the more personally moving because More wrote annotations in the margins of each book, the reflections of a man knowing he was going to be martyred. Throughout the 19 pages of the Book of Hours, he wrote a beautiful prayer which has come to be known as "A Godly Meditation." In the Psalter, he wrote about 150 notes, related to the adjoining Psalms. They express his deep emotions, apprehensions, and anxieties as he awaited his death. The notes are consistent in theme with his Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, a classic of spiritual literature which he wrote during his imprisonment.

As I pondered over More’s notes and the texts they accompanied, I had an overwhelming sense of being in the presence of the holy. His writing is incredibly neat, legible, orderly, strong – expressive of a man who is deliberate and measured. Clearly he is fully aware of the reality which faces him, but the mysticism of his prayers is transcending. He crosses nothing out!

Saint Thomas More was strongly rooted. The moving force of his life was love of God. When we sit, kneel, or stand before God in prayer, whether before the Blessed Sacrament or otherwise, we cannot help but be open and honest. More cultivated his prayer and meditation over the years with the daily habits of prayer and ongoing exercises of devotion. His prayer in the Tower of London was not a sudden development. It was the expression of the integrity that matured in him over the years.

The following are excerpts from "A Godly Meditation":

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

The meditation prayer goes on, and the themes remain consistent. At his trial, More spoke at length in his plea for liberty of conscience. His prayer reveals the strength of his conscience, the adamantine quality of his convictions. He had resigned as Lord Chancellor of England rather than compromise his moral values. He would suffer beheading rather than surrender his convictions.

Coming away from the encounter with Saint Thomas More’s prayer book and insights into his communion with God, I could not help but have a deeper sense of the importance of prayer and the devotions of faith at every stage of our lives. A note to parents, godparents, and grandparents: now is the time to register youngsters for Catholic schools and religious education programs. Also, every day is an opportunity for us personally to lead our children in these habits.

The example of Saint Thomas More is especially compelling in these weeks of debate on health care reform (which is sounding increasingly like payment reform). The consciences of health care workers in protecting life at its beginning and end stages must be safeguarded. Human beings ourselves must be protected at our beginning and end stages. Taxpayers must not be forced to pay for abortions. Politicians who say they are personally opposed to abortion but will not impose their convictions in this matter on other people, when they do precisely that on so many other issues, leave themselves open to the charge of shallowness and worse.

Saint Thomas More, in the depth of his character and the integrity of his person, stands as a model not merely for reflection on a summer afternoon but for imitation through all the seasons and all the years. His words on the scaffold as he was about to die ring for the ages, "I die, the king’s good servant, but God’s first." R.W. Chambers, who wrote the definitive biography of Saint Thomas More, called these "the most weighty words ever spoken upon a scaffold."

We might add, "or anyplace else."

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As I write this, the Archbishop’s Annual Appeal is showing a total of $9,074,797, which is $39,040 ahead of last year’s Appeal at this time. That makes for an edifying account in any year, but especially in this year when we see disintegration in so many parts of the economic sector. People continue to lose jobs and to have their homes foreclosed, but you continue to rise to the challenge. Thanks to you, so far we have been able to keep pace with the requests for emergency assistance, but the task is not getting easier. Thank God, you understand very well that in giving to the Appeal, you are exercising the Corporal Works of Mercy and making a significant difference in the lives of people in need. My gratitude is enhanced by my profound sentiments of respect and esteem for you.