A SAINT FOR OUR TIMES

OCTOBER 1, 2006

On Thursday, October 5, at 6:30 p.m. the Church’s annual “Red Mass” will be celebrated at Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Brownsville. The Valley’s civil servants and members of the legal community will gather to worship and pray that God bless, strengthen, and guide them in the exercise of their public duties.

The patron saint of these public servants is St. Thomas More, a man who was a literary scholar, eminent lawyer, gentlemen, father of four children, and Chancellor of England. He is also the patron saint of adopted children, difficult marriages, large families, step-parents, and widowers. Who was this man, and why is he important for us today?

More was admitted to the bar in 1501. In 1504, he married Jane Colt, and the couple had four children. When she died, More married a widow, Alice Middleton. His gifts of personality and his legal competence came to the attention of Henry VIII, who appointed him to various court positions, knighted him, and eventually made him Lord Chancellor of England.

When King Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon and married Anne Boleyn, he authorized himself to do so against the teaching of the Church by declaring himself head of the Church in England. Henry sought More’s public support for his actions, but Thomas steadfastly refused to give it. Instead he resigned his office, choosing not to compromise his conscience. When he refused to take an oath acknowledging Henry VIII to be the head of the Church of England he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, convicted of treason, and beheaded on July 6, 1535.

In 1929, the well known English writer and defender of the faith, G. K. Chesterton, wrote that “Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, but he is not quite so important now as he will be in about a hundred years.”

Why Thomas More is so important for us today is easy to see, when we consider the complexities of law and the numerous temptations, sometimes very grave, that beset those who shape and apply the law to compromise their consciences by doing what is expedient rather than what is right, and by making or upholding laws that violate the sanctity of human life or the dignity of persons. There are many pressures on conscience today to cooperate with what is against the natural moral law. We witness many great temptations to try to get around the moral law by simply making our own laws that permit us to do what we want, or by striking down laws that keep us from doing what we want, even if what we want is wrong.

Thomas More’s life shows the heavy price one can pay for fidelity to the truth. He shows that obeying the voice of God speaking to us in the inner recesses of our consciences is not always easy, but sometimes requires great heroism, even martyrdom.

Fidelity to God’s law requires not just strong character, but also divine help. That is a central reason why we gather for the Red Mass: to implore the Lord for an increase in the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance in shaping and applying the law. We pray, in other words, that God’s wisdom may be our own.

St. Thomas More witnessed his fidelity to God, and his reliance on his help, in a moving letter he wrote to his daughter Margaret from prison. Here is a portion of that letter:

“Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God.

“By the merits of his bitter passion joined to mine and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, his bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides.

“I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.”

I invite all civil servants and members of the legal community to join me for the Red Mass, and I ask everyone to remember them in their prayers.

+Bishop Raymundo J. Peña

last updated 05-Jun-2008 9:48 sitemap