St. Thomas More - 7

St. Thomas More – 7

In pursuit of the truth – cinops be gone – Friday, Jan. 9, 2009
More’s Early Years – 6 p. 44-6
While More was straddling the line between the world and the cloister, he was elected, in 1504, as a burgess of Parliament, thus drawing him for the first time into the thickets of public affairs. All too soon More proved to be a courageous politician, beginning his career by engaging in a head-on confrontation with reigning monarch over the question of revenue….

In the autumn of 1504, at the end of his years spent with the Carthusians, More wrote to his friend John Colet. Expressing regret that Colet was away from London, he laments that he is thereby deprived of the wisdom of Colet’s sermons and spiritual direction, the latter of which he seems to have felt in particular need of. He then complains of the way the city life can stifle and choke the aspirations of the soul, as contrasted with the spiritually refreshing atmosphere of the countryside…

More’s final decision to remain a layman in the world could not have been easy one for him to make, we know this to have been the case from a comment he made to his daughter thirty years later, shortly before his death….

One need only look at the exemplary family life of Thomas More’s subsequent years, together with his high ideals of lay spirituality and service to his Church, to understand why God kept him in the world. While we cannot know the specific reasons that entered into More’s decision on a state of life, perhaps the best explanation that has been offered is that provided by the author of the so-called “Ro:Ba:” biography of the saint:

…. {A}s God appointed that worthy man John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, to be the Champion of the Clergy, so he reserved Thomas More in the degree of the laity, to be the proto-Martyr of England that suffered for the defence of the union of the Catholic Church.
Stapleton’s thoughts in this regard are equally valid:

…{P}erhaps it was that God, for his own greater glory, wished him to remain a layman, to accept the honours and to meet the difficulties of public life, and at the same time wished to kept his servant unspotted and unharmed, and even to lead him to the highest perfection of sanctity.

Finally there is the particular eloquent observation of Cresacre More, who had good reason to be especially grateful for his great-grandfather’s decision to embark upon the family life:

… God had allotted him for an other estate, not to live solitary, but that he might be a pattern to married men, how they should carefully bring up their children, how dearly they should carefully bring up their children, how dearly they should love their wives, how they should employ their endeavour wholly for the good of their country, yet excellently perform the virtues of religious men, as, piety, charity, humility, obedience, and conjugal chastity….

As we have already seen above, Thomas More considered the English countryside a far more wholesome place than the city, and thus when he had decided upon his state in life, he was ultimately to ask for the hand of a young and simple country girl in marriage. ...

Mark your calendar for Thursday, Jan 22nd, 2009 from 7-9 P.M. @ the Haskett Library –2650 W. Broadway, Anaheim, Ca. Our “Thomas More Study Group” on American Politics and Religion will meet.

George H. Kubeck, P.O. Box 865, Stanton, Ca. 90680-9998