From "St. Thomas More: II"

He lived in an age when the children of this world were, all too evidently, wiser than the children of light. How wise they were, after their fashion, those newly-made gentry, those go-getting clerks, those court adventurers, who flourished under the Tudors! How quick they were to foresee and to forestall the whim of a royal master! Those others, the children of light, who loved the old ways and had been brought up in them, were not so quick to discern the will of their royal Master in heaven. They could not see what was happening; events moved too swiftly for them; the Church's cause was lost before they knew it. The Mass was still said, our Lady still venerated; what was wrong? Only a few, St John Fisher, St Thomas More and the rest, saw just where it was the breaking-point came; just when it was you must make a stand, if a stand was to be made at all. They made their protest, and left it on record; ineffectual then, it should be an encouragement and a warning for Catholics of a later time.

We live, like the men of the sixteenth century, in an age of new horizons; and for us, as for them, the old question still presses, How much can we afford to fall in with the spirit of our times? I say, “afford”; I am using commercial language, as our Lord used to. There comes a point at which, in reaching out for earthly prizes, we may lose the heavenly. The Church, it is true, speaks to us with more particularity of guidance than formerly. On the other hand, in countries like our own, the Catholic tradition is so much forgotten that we find ourselves constantly at cross purposes with our next-door neighbours. In such times, let us thank God for the inspiration he has given us in histories like those of St Thomas More and St John Fisher, so far from us in date, so near to us in living influence. And let us ask them to pray for us, and make us good stewards of the heavenly wealth committed to us, wise in our fashion, as the children of this world in theirs.

Pastoral Sermons and Occasional Sermons, ed. Philip Caraman, S.J., p. 749.

The saint was martyred this day, July 6, 1535. See the Catholic Encyclopedia. See also To Set the World at Nought, and my St. Thomas More blog of a year ago.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 07/06/03 03:45:51 PM
Categorized as Religious.