St. Thomas More + St. John Fisher

We’ve got three significant Catholic celebrations coming up on consecutive days: two Solemnities (the highest rank of Catholic Church celebration)

• Sunday’s Corpus Christi (The Body and Blood of Christ)
• Monday’s Birthday of John the Baptist

and today’s Feast (second rank celebration) of the Reformation martyrs St. John Fisher, a Bishop, and St. Thomas More, knighted, married layman, Lord High Chancellor of England, a close adviser of Henry VIII and an internationally-renowned philosopher and spiritual writer. Both were martyred for taking a stand against Henry’s separation from the Roman Catholic Church.

The famous Hans Holbein painting of St. Thomas More.

I have a particular interest in these two saints for differing reasons:

• Bishop John Fisher

Up until roughly the mid-20th century, members of religious orders would take a « religious name » which they would be known by within their religious order. One of my teachers (and my form teacher in Yr. 9) at the De La Mennais Brothers’ school in Southampton was a certain Bro. John Fisher (original name Vincent Connolly) who died in his mid-90s a few years ago. A proud Wigan native, he taught Theology for many years in the Brothers’ training house in Ploërmel, Brittany, part of our Mother House complex and where I am typing this text right now! Thanks in particular to his warm, likeable character and his speaking French with a strong Wigan accent, he left an indelible mark on a whole generation of French Brothers who still speak about him with great fondness. At the end of my Lower 6th/Yr. 12, Bro. John phoned me up to invite me for a meal in the Brothers’ community in Southampton, having been prompted by my Music teacher who was convinced that I had a vocation to be a Brother. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Bro. John Fisher in 2006 (aged 87).

• Sir Thomas More

Some of you will, like me, have studied at school the Robert Bolt play about the life and martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, “A Man For All Seasons”, and/or will have seen the Oscar-winning film of the same name. Or maybe you have come across More in the television adaptations “Wolf Hall” or “The Tudors” (controversial portrayals that paint him in a more ambiguous light). “A Man For All Seasons” certainly left its mark on me when studying it for O-Level. At a time when my own faith was only just starting to burgeon and thoughts of a vocation were at their most vague, his stubborn refusal to compromise either his personal religious faith or its public expression, to the point of death, was, to me, quite awe-inspiring and not a little terrifying.

Among the many memorable lines in the play and film one still stands out for me: More says to Richard Rich, the “Judas” to More’s ”Christ”,

    “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?” <Apologies to Welsh people>.

By the time I was about to begin my initial year of Brothers’ training in France some 5 years after my O-Levels, I had already long since decided that I would take the name Bro. Thomas More. So, it was with a certain disappointment that I was told that Brothers no longer took a new name upon joining the order.

I still find myself in awe of people who in today’s world are persecuted for their Christian faith (in tragically growing numbers) and yet who stay strong and true to their beliefs. I find myself wondering what I would do in their situation and I pray that I might have a little of their strength and courage.

I’ll finish with a “Prayer for Good Humour” written by St. Thomas More which Pope Francis reportedly says each day

Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.

Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it.

Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good

and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil,

but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.

Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments,

nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.”

Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humour.

Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy,

and to be able to share it with others.

Amen

(Staff Bulletin, 24/06/19)