A pilgrimage to the cell of Saint Thomas More

Life in Rome is beginning to slow done even as it is picking up a bit of speed. By this I mean that our classes have now come to an end and we have a couple of weeks yet to prepare to for our final comprehensive exams (and pack for the long-awaited journey home).

Since we did not have classes last week Wednesday through Friday, I decided to make a second visit to England with the express purpose of visiting the cell in the Tower of London in which King Henry VIII held Saint Thomas More prisoner.

Access to this cell is not part of the usual admission to the Tower complex (because you have to pass through the Governor's house to enter the cell) so I made arrangements for this pilgrimage in advance to take place at 11:00 a.m. a week ago today.

One of the Yeoman Warders gave me a brief tour of the Tower of London before escorting me to Saint Thomas' cell:

We do not know what this cell would have looked like during the fifteen months Saint Thomas was held here, though it likely had many of the pleasantries enjoyed by those of means, such as furniture, wall-hangings, and a rug on the floor. Over the years since his martyrdom, pilgrims are suspected of having chipped away at the walls and the floors for relics to bring him. I suspect the vaulting that still remains gives some indication of what the cell would have been like:

He was certainly not kept in your average dungeon. The Tower of London, after all, was both a royal palace and only housed prisoners of status; commoners - like William Wallace - would never have been housed in the Tower.

Even so, his imprisonment cannot have been easy. After talking a bit about the relationship between King Henry and Saint Thomas, the Yeoman Warder politely excused himself for a few minutes to allow me time for personal prayer. After being alone in the cell for perhaps one minute, I could already feel that even in relative comfort, this would not have been easy. I could hear conversations from the tourists walking by outside the Bell Tower in which he was imprisoned. I could hear birds chirping outside the Tower. I could hear footsteps and voices from the hallway and rooms just outside the cell. What must it have been like to hear the approach of voices and of footsteps for fifteen months, never quite knowing if someone was coming to visit him or to tell him of sentence of death (which, from his writings, he seems to have suspected would be handed down for some time). Just thinking about how hard it must have been for him not to give in simply to be with his loved ones gave me an even greater respect and admiration for this man of truly heroic virtue.

When he was first imprisoned, Saint Thomas had something of a comfortable life in the Tower (as far as prisons go). He had a servant to attend him, plenty of books and writing materials, and could receive visiting family and friends with ease.

We entered through the door on the left. The space in the center was a fireplace.

However, as the weeks turned to months and still the former Lord High Chancellor of England would not affirm King Henry as head of the Church in England, the monarch had one nicety after another taken from Saint Thomas until he was left only with the shirt on his back.

This particular cell was initially built as a cellar and the temperature in the chamber - even today - is noticeably cooler than the hallway and rooms just outside it. Moreover, it is composed of a couple of different areas:

There was a latrine.

This window looks out towards Tower Green, where the executions were held.

 

From the above window, Saint Thomas may not have been able to see the actual execution of his friend Saint John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and the only Bishop in England to stand against the king, (and who was imprisoned in the cell above Saint Thomas and with whom he communicated by letter) on 22 July 1535, but he certainly would have been able to see the assembled crowds and hear their cheers and cries. Everything he heard and saw must have stayed with him until he was executed two weeks later.

As I stood in his cell contemplating the importance of his witness not only the true dignity and reality of marriage, but also to the independence of the Church, I could not help but recall part of the testimony he gave to Master Secretary Cromwell in the Tower on 2 May 1535:

I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith, I long not to live. And I am dying already, and have since I came here been divers[e] times in the case that I thought to die within one hour, and I thank our Lord I was never sorry for it, but rather sorry when I saw the pang past. And therefore my poor body is at the King's pleasure; would God my death might do him good.

Saint Thomas had spent most every Friday of his adult life - even while serving as Chancellor - in prayer, contemplating the Passion of the Lord and many of his spiritual writings offer us some of the fruit of his prayer. It is this habit of mediating on the Crucified Lord that sustained Saint Thomas in his imprisonment.

After he resigned the office of Lord High Chancellor to retire in peace to his family, Saint Thomas composed his intended epitaph for his grave (to squelch rumors that King Henry forced his resignation), which he concluded with these words:

That he [Thomas] may not have erected this tomb in vain while still alive, and that he may not shudder with fear at the thought of encroaching death, but may go to meet it gladly, with longing for Christ, and that he may find death not completely a death for himself but rather the gateway to a happier life, I beg you, kind reader, attend him with your prayers while he still lives and also when he has done with life.

His mortal remains were never placed within this tomb.

Saint Thomas was beheaded on Tower Green, what today is called Trinity Square Gardens:

 

Before the executioner's axe struck off his head, Saint Thomas was, as per the custom, to say a few final words. The Paris Newsletter's account of his execution, provides these last words for us, of which I wish to highlight these:

I know well that the reason why you have condemned me is because I have never been willing to consent to the King's second marriage; but I hope in the divine goodness and mercy, that as St. Paul and St. Stephen whom he persecuted are now friends in Paradise, so we, though differing in his world, shall be united in perfect charity in the other. I pray God to protect the King and give him good counsel.

These are truly the words of a saint and show us how to forgive our enemies.

After his execution, Saint Thomas' head was impaled on a pike and displayed on Tower Bridge to serve as a warning to others (his daughter, Margaret, later bribed one of the guards and received his head, which is now buried in the church of Saint Dunstan in Canterbury in the Roper family's vault). Saint Thomas body was hauled back inside the Tower and buried - with 1,500 other bodies - beneath the floor of the Chapel Royal.

Some time later, repairs were ordered to the Chapel Royal and, in order to install a heating system, the bones of these 1,500 executed persons were removed and interred in a common crypt within the Chapel Royal.

Because there was no way to determine which bones belonged to Saint Thomas, a memorial tomb and shrine was built in his honor next to this large crypt:

Beside the memorial hang portaits of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, above the latter's prayer book, which lies open to the Veni Creator Spiritus:

The entire pilgrimage within the Tower to the cell and crypt (including the tour) lasted just one hour, but left a very deep impression on my heart. I am deeply grateful to the Yeoman Warders for their many kindnesses to me and for allowing me to make this pilgrimage.

St. Thomas More and Death, the next-door neighbor

Yesterday much of the world spent the first part of the day celebrating the 90th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II and the second part of the day mourning the death of the musician formerly known as Prince (whose music I do not know) who died at the age of 57. The 33-year difference (so far) between the span of their lives ought to give us pause and remind us that tomorrow - though it is likely to be given to us - is not guaranteed to us.

"In all you do," says the wise author of the Book of Sirach, "remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin" (Sirach 7:36). In his unfinished commentary on this verse, The Four Last Things, Saint Thomas More hopes to help his reader understand the wisdom of this verse and joy that heeding it produces because, as he writes, "we must realize that even if [death] is not rushing toward us, we yet never cease ourselves to rush toward it."

Saint Thomas suggests,

Detail,
St. Dunstan's, Canterbury

...the thing that keeps us from considering death as such, and from taking the great profit that would arise of the remembrance of it, is that because of our hope for our a long life, we look upon death either as so far off that we it not at all, or else as only a vague and uncertain sight, as we can see something so far off that we do not know whether it is a bush or a beast. And surely that is how we deal with death, looking at it from afar, through a big, long space of as many years as we hope to live. And we imagine those to be many, and thus dangerously and foolishly delude ourselves. For just as wives would have their husbands think from the example of Sarah that there is no woman so old that she cannot have a child, so there is no man so old, as Cicero says, that he does not expect to live one year yet. And so for young folk, they look not at how many in their own generation, younger than themselves, are already dead, but at who is the oldest man in the town, and upon his years thy base their calculation -- whereas the wiser way would be to realize that a young man may die soon and an old man cannot stay alive for long, but that within a little while the one may die and the other must. And with this reckoning the will look upon death as much nearer at hand, and better perceive the realities of it, and thereby take more fruit from the remembrance of it and make themselves the more ready for it.

Whereas Saint Francis of Assisi refers to death as a sister, Saint Thomas More refers to death "not as a stranger but as a next-door neighbor" because death is never all that far away from any of us.

Lest one suspect Saint Thomas did not really know of that which he wrote, consider one account of his martyrdom:

Detail from St. Dunstan's, Canterbury

When he came to the Scaffold, it seemed ready to fall, whereupon he said merrily to the Lieutenant, Pray, Sir, see me safe up; and as to my coming down, let me shift for myself. Being about to speak to the People, he was interrupted by the Sheriff, and thereupon he only desired the People to pray for him, and bear Witness he died in the Faith of the Catholic Church, a faithful Servant both to God and the King. Then kneeling, he repeated the Miserere Psalm with much Devotion; and, rising up the Executioner asked him Forgiveness. He kissed him, and said, Pick up thy Spirits, Man, and be not afraid to do thine Office; my Neck is very short, take heed therefore thou strike not awry for having thine Honesty. Laying his Head upon the Block, he bid the Executioner stay till he had put his Beard aside, for that had commit­ted no Treason. Thus he suffered with much Cheerfulness (Hall’s Chron. Vol. 2. S. 2).

His ability to ascend the scaffold with a joke did not come about because of a delusion about reality or because of some psychological illness, but because he spent so much of his life remembering the reality of death and preparing for it. He faithfully lived his life in union with Christ Jesus and knew that at the moment of his death - however or whenever it would come - he looking forward to going forth to merrily meet his Lord. When you and I lie on our deathbeds - or even ascend the scaffold - will the same be said of us?

Archbishop Aquila: Heroism IS for the average Christian, even married couples

His Excellency the Most Reverend Samuel J. Aquila, Archbishop of Denver, in a strongly worded defense of the Church's teaching on marriage, has asked, "Did Thomas More and John Fisher die for nothing?"

Permit me, please, to share his words at some length, beginning with this excellent historical background to the question currently on the minds of many people within - and without - the Church:

The idea that Catholics should be allowed to remarry and receive communion did not begin with the letter signed by Cardinal Kasper and other members of the German episcopate in 1993. Another country’s episcopate – England’s – pioneered this experiment in Christian doctrine nearly 500 years ago. At stake then was not just whether any Catholic could remarry, but whether the king could, since his wife had not borne him a son.

As with those who advocate for communion for the civilly remarried, the English bishops were uncomfortable with embracing divorce and remarriage outright. Instead, they chose to bend the law to the individual circumstances of the case with which they were confronted, and King Henry VIII was granted an “annulment” — on a fraudulent basis and without the sanction of Rome.

If “heroism is not for the average Christian,” as the German Cardinal Walter Kasper has put it, it certainly wasn’t for the King of England. Instead, issues of personal happiness and the well-being of a country made a strong utilitarian argument for Henry’s divorce. And the King could hardly be bothered to skip communion as the result of an irregular marriage.

England’s Cardinal Wolsey and all the country’s bishops, with the exception of Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, supported the king’s attempt to undo his first – and legitimate – marriage. Like Fisher, Thomas More a layman and the king’s chancellor, also withheld his support. Both were martyred – and later canonized.

In publicly advocating that the king’s marriage was indissoluble, Fisher argued that “this marriage of the king and queen can be dissolved by no power, human or Divine.” For this principle, he said, he was willing to give his life. He continued by noting that John the Baptist saw no way to “die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage,” despite the fact that marriage then “was not so holy at that time as it has now become by the shedding of Christ’s Blood.”

Given some of suggestions raised at the Ordinary Synod concerning a possible admission to the Holy Eucharist to those who are divorced and remarried - that is, living in a public, adulterous relationship - Archbishop Aquila asks, "Do the German bishops [and their supporters] believe that Sts. Thomas More and John Fischer sacrificed their lives in vain?"

After demonstrating the errors in such an argument, the Archbishop of Denver says something very important and should be rather obvious to every Catholic of good will:

On remarriage, and many other issues, no one would say that the Church’s teaching, which is Christ’s, is easy. But Christ himself did not compromise on core teachings to keep his disciples from leaving him – whether it was on the Eucharist or marriage (Jn 6: 60-71; Mt 19: 3-12). Nor did John Fisher compromise to keep the king Catholic....

As disciples we are always called to listen to the voice of Jesus before the voice of the world, culture or history. The voice of Jesus sheds light on the darkness of the world and cultures. Let us pray that all concerned will listen to those words of eternal life, no matter how difficult!

 Be sure to read the entire piece.

A book of apologetics by Saint Thomas More

On my recent flight across the Pacific Ocean, I finished reading Saint Thomas More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies (New York: Scepter Publishers, Inc., 2006), an intriguing account of a dialogue More had with the servant of a friend concerning the teachings of Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and other Protestants.

After the conversation, the servant was to return to his master and relate what More said. In case the servant either misremembered or misrepresented More's responses, he decided to write out the conversation and sent it to his friend.

It was a fascinating read because More, who was beheaded in 1535, provided early, substantial, and logically irrefutable responses to many of the Protestants objections about the Sacred Scriptures, the veneration of Saints and relics, the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and numerous other objections besides. He even discusses the personality of Luther in various places.

Because the book is the record of a conversation, it is not organized explicitly according to a thematic structure (which is perhaps its only downfall), but reads in the manner of an actual conversation, with a back-and-forth between More and the servant. The servant first asks More's opinion about a certain topic (as instructed by his master); after More makes his response, the servant expresses his agreement, asks additional questions, or makes his own objections, each of which furthers the conversation along and to which More responds.

This is a book that should be in the hands of anyone involved in or interested in the work of apologetics. The answers More provides are not very different from those in more contemporary works, but they are often more thorough and often more blunt.

Saint Thomas More on the Holy Face

As part of my summer reading, I am working my way through Saint Thomas More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies (which is, I might say, a very good read).

Last evening I found myself reading through his refutation of the arguments against sacred images in which More brought up what is now known as the Veil of Manoppello. He said that Jesus

was pleased to leave the holy veronica, also an express image of his blessed face, as a keepsake to remain in honor among those who loved him, from the time of his bitter Passion to this day. Just as by the miracle of his blessed, holy hand it was imprinted and left on the sudarium [i.e., napkin; see John 20:7], so by a similar miracle has it been, in that thin, corruptible cloth, kept and preserved uncorrupted these fifteen hundred years, fresh and easy to make out, to the inward comfort, spiritual rejoicing, and greatly increased fervor and devotion of the hearts of good Christian people.

For the curious, and for those who know something of the history of the Veil of Manoppello, More wrote his Dialogue Concerning Heresies in 1528.

You can see for yourself just how fresh and easy to make out the face of the Lord is in that piece of byssus:

I have never met anyone who has looked upon the Holy Face who did not the Shrine of the Holy Face inwardly comforted, rejoicing in spirit, or with increased devotion.

Saintly sarcasm

For though I grant that God loves a cheerful giver, still I have no doubt that He loved Tobias and holy Job too.  Now it is true that both of them bore their calamities bravely and patiently, but neither of them, so far as I know, was exactly jumping with joy or clapping their hands out of happiness. 

- Saint Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ

Barron on More and the Pope

In honor of the day

Over at Catholic Fire, Jean has provided a few of her favorite quotes from Saint Thomas More. Among them is this one:

Every tribulation which ever comes our way either is sent to be medicinal, if we will take it as such, or may become medicinal, if we will make it such, or is better than medicinal, unless we forsake it.

Go, learn more more of his wisdom.

The Litany of St. Thomas More

The more I read St. Thomas More the more impressed I am by him and his thoughts, and the deeper my devotion to him grows.

The Most Rev. Michael A. Saltarelli, Bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington (don't confuse him with Bishop Serratelli of the Diocese of Patterson, which I at first did), has given us a Litany of St. Thomas More.

Pray it often!

A spiritual gem for Lent

One day last week I randomly picked a book from my shelves that I’ve always meant to read but haven’t yet (there are many such books): A Man Born Again by Saint Thomas More.

More wrote this book while locked in the Tower as an autobiography. I am half-way through the book and have greatly enjoyed it. It has proved useful while exercising on the elliptical machine and as meditative reading before bed.

Today I read this magnificent passage, written just after the death of his wife:

Memory fixed on the first day at the Charterhouse. I would be a saint? Men would revere my memory? How pleasant the prospect! How easy the path before me! I had not counted the cost. I did not consider that sanctification of man is not the work of man but the work of God. I had contemplated that God would work that sanctification only in those obedient to Him unto death – even to the death of the cross. No thought of Christ’s Passion had disturbed my dreams. I would be a saint! How mockingly the words must have ascended before the throne of my crucified God.

My cross pressed heavily as I sat there. I could thrust it aside. I could obscure it by any of a hundred pleasures. Or I could bend forward submissively, lift my arms, as Christ did, to steady that cross, and begin the weary march to Calvary.

I had not the strength. I could not bear the burden. I could not submit. I slumped on the bench and looked vacantly at the altar. I had not even sufficient courage to ask for strength.

“Then pray only for courage!”

I stiffened, so clearly had I heard the words. They had been as loud and clear as though someone had spoken them. I glanced at my father beside me but he had not noticed my movement. He knelt straight and motionless. Pray for courage? - I had no desire to pray even for that.

“Then pray for the desire!” The voice was louder and clearer, more insistent than before; yet there was no sound. The voice was within me, urgent and compelling.

I could not pray. Sorrow – self-pity – numbed my mind and heart. I pushed myself forward and knelt beside my father. I could not pray. Let my action answer the insistent voice! Let the voice pray for me!

In what manner does God not work within the soul, yet credit the work as merit to man? I offered no prayer – I had no prayer to offer. I could do no more than push my body mutely forward and kneel, more the token than the substance of prayer. Love impelled me and God accepted that love however poorly I expressed it.

Homily - 22 June 2007 - Memorial of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

In the lives of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More we see two men who "store[d] up treasures in heaven" (Matthew 6:20), confident that "from all their distress God rescues the just" (Responsorial Psalm antiphon).

As he stood upon the scaffold, John Fisher – the only English Bishop to oppose King Henry VIII’s Oath of Allegiance - said to those gathered around: "Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my stomach hath served me well thereunto, so that yet I have not feared death."

With the Bishop of Rochester, the Lord Chancellor Thomas More – the first layman appointed to this post - also trusted fully in the Lord, not fearing even death. To his daughter, Margaret, he wrote: "Do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best."

Together these holy martyrs call us to consider not only our trust in the Lord, by how well we conform our lives to the high calling that is given us as adopted sons and daughters of God. Too often do we seek the easy way out, as it were, begging God to remove all hardships and difficulties from our lives, whatever they may be. It is precisely in these moments that these martyrs not only urge us to place all our hope and trust in God, but they show us how to do so. It was Thomas More who wrote to his children, saying, "We cannot go to heaven in featherbeds." We attain heaven through a sharing in the Cross of Christ.

Thomas and John knew well what Jesus meant when he said, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). This these holy martyrs did. Standing upon the scaffold, the Lord Chancellor of England said, "I die the King’s good servant and God’s first."

The weakness of which both John and Thomas may boast is their unwavering loyalty to God and his Church, this loyalty that led them reject the power and prestige of this world. Saint Francis of Assisi often said, "the saints lived lives of heroic virtue, [but] we are satisfied to talk about them." We must do more than simply talk about the lives of the saints; we must emulate them and follow in their footsteps, confidently trusting in the will of the Lord and going where he calls.

Let us, with John and Thomas, place our treasure in the Cross of Christ, that we, too, may "remain faithful until death" and receive "the crown of life," standing forever in the glory of Christ our King (Revelation 2:10).

More from More

I finished reading Saint Thomas More's Utopia this morning and wanted to leave this for you:

...the Utopians fail to understand why anyone should be so fascinated by the dull gleam of a tiny bit of stone, when he has all the stars in the sky to look at - or how anyone can be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer wollen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a sheep, and they never turned it into anything better than a sheep.

Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who give it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience. The result is that a man with about as much mental agility as a lump of lead or a block of wood, a man whose utter stupidity is paralleled only by his immorality, can have lots of good, intelligent people at his beck and call, just because he happens to possess a large pile of gold coins. And if by some freak of fortune or trick of the law - two equally effective methods of turning things upside down - the said coins were suddenly transferred to the most worthless member of his domestic staff, you'd soon see the present owner trotting after his money, like an extra piece of currency, and becoming his own servant's servant. Btu what puzzles and disgusts the Utopians even more is the idiotic way some people have of practically worshipping a rich man, not because they owe him money or are otherwise in his power, but simply because he's rich - although they know perfectly well that he's far too mean to let a single penny come their way, so long as he's alive to stop it...

Just a little something to ponder.

Saintly humor

Every time I read Saint Thomas More I like him more than before (pun intended). Take, for instance, this little bit from Utopia, Book I:

“But that’s not the only thing that compels people to steal. There are other factors at work which must, I think, be peculiar to your country.”

“And what are they?” asked the Cardinal.

“Sheep,” I told him. “These placid creatures, which used to require so little food, have now apparently developed a raging appetite, and turned into man-eaters. Fields, houses, towns, everything goes down their throats.”

It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?