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| This site updated: 20 January, 2001. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| **"A Man for All Seasons": | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| A Saint for Our Times | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| **(descriptive quote by Robert Whittenton " More is a man of an angelic 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 past-time, and sometimes of sad gravity. A Man for all Seasons.") |
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| Former Chancellor of England, author of "Utopia", a ground breaking work that gave the world the name for societies built on dreams, Thomas More is well known in historical circles. Within the Church he loved and ultimately died to defend, he is less known, most people not even realizing that he was canonized for more than being a martyr of the Tudor "reformation". St. Thomas is called the patron of lawyers, since that is how he made his living. Christian humanists are fond of quoting him, as are secular humanists, who think he is one of them. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Most Catholics, if they know of St. Thomas, know of him mostly as a martyr who lost his head on July 6, 1535, because he wouldn't deny the supremacy of the Pope, Many know of him from watching a movie called "A Man for All Seasons" written as a play in two acts by Robert Bolt. But Sir Thomas More was more; St. Thomas More is more. He was a man of strong faith and deep conviction. His prayer routine was a daily ritual lasting anywhere from two to seven hours a day. He made time for prayer by sleeping less. He believed deeply in practicing penance, both in the forms of almsgiving, frequent confession, and self mortification. While imprisoned in the Tower of London for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy that would have declared Henry VIII the supreme head of the Church in England, Thomas, instead of giving in to family and friends to ignore his conscience and take the oath, turned his own imprisonment to good use by meditating on the Passion of our Lord, and then writing a book about his meditations. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Come and meet Sir Thomas More, who, when all of the rest of society was taking the easy way out because "everyone else did it", followed his conscience. His reply to those who asked what his conscience mattered and why he couldn't just follow along with everyone else, "for fellowship's sake"? "...when you are all rewarded with heaven for following your conscience, and I am condemned to hell for NOT following mine, will not ye not all join me, for fellowship?" The man who said, "I do none harm, I think none harm, I say none harm, and if this be not enough to leave a man live, then in truth I long not to live" It wasn't enough, they killed him. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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