St. Thomas More - 4

St. Thomas More – 4
Website – cinops be gone – Monday, Dec. 29, 2008

This is the 4th report on James Monti’s “The King’s Good Servant But God’s First”.

More’s Early Years - 3

It was in or around 1501 that a new chapter opened in More’s life, perhaps prompted in part by a deepened introspection following the recent loss of his mother. The young Thomas had felt the call to perfection and sought to answer it as best he could; and so he spent the next 4 years contemplating what state in life God might be calling him to. Thus he gave serious consideration to the idea of entering the priesthood and the religious life. For this reason, from around the age of 23 to 27, he spent at least part of each day participating in the spiritual exercises of THE CARTHUSEAN MONKS OF LONDON’S CHARTERHOUSE. Thomas lived in quarters nearby, so that he continued his work in the world while nourishing his soul with Carthusian spirituality.

Their rule is among the most demanding of any in the Church. The Carthusians had not in any way slackened in the observance of the constitutions of their founder, Saint Bruno. Their life is strictly and totally “contemplative”, as distinguished from the “active” life of other orders that exercise their ministry in some fairly visible from inside the outside world. Much of the Office was chanted, thereby adding to the amount of time and stamina required to perform this daily function. The Breviary of the Carthusians was longer still than the Roman Breviary of Pope Saint Pius V. Coupled with his grueling daily routine were a number of extraordinary austerities, including the continual wearing of a hair shirt, a perpetual abstinence from meat and animal fat, a Lenten fast extended to last 6 months, as well as a weekly fast on only bread and water (usually on Fridays) in the year.

In this light we cannot but admire the depth of More’s faith in considering such a life, which he took the opportunity to see for himself. The fortitude of those called to the Carthusian state was to be amply demonstrated years later as 18 members of this order, mostly from the London Charterhouse, were eventually to die for their fidelity to the papacy.

During this time of More’s life he completed a translation of the biography of recently deceased Italian scholar, Giovanni PICO delle Mirandola (1462-1494). Pico’s life as an unmarried layman, devoted to ecclesiastical studies, stirred the interest of More whose academic pursuits and ascetical practices resembled in certain ways those of Pico. The young Thomas turned to the life of Pico as an example for the lay state only after he had decided not to become a priest or religious. More was never to lose his sense of reverence for the religious life and was to defend it in his subsequent apological writings.

Devotion to the Passion is perhaps the single most pervasive aspect of More’s spirituality, an aspect to which he was to give expression every Friday and Good Friday, as we shall later see. Then there was Pico’s zeal for the sacred sciences – especially his day-and-night study of the Scriptures and his encyclopedic knowledge of the Church Fathers – pursuits that we already know were dear to More.

George H. Kubeck