God Before the King: The Witness of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More

 In 2015, during a tumultuous time of my life, I had the honor of touching the first-class relics of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher.  Both men were executed during the English Reformation for their refusal to recognize Henry VIII's supremacy over the Church. They are remembered as martyrs who chose faithfulness to their religious convictions over political survival. Their feast day is celebrated together on July 9th.

Many of my favorite saints seem to hail from the Mediterranean…. Little did I know about these two English saints, but had a special attachment to them after my visit to their relics and felt as if both saints were preparing me to learn how to detach from the world.  Why?  My life was simultaneously falling apart and miraculously surging upward in restoration right before my eyes, in order that I would seek God first in everything that I do, and give Him the greater glory.

St. Thomas More

Thomas More (1478-1535) was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, and statesman who served as Lord Chancellor of England under King Henry VIII. He was a noted Renaissance humanist and is best known for his book "Utopia" (1516), which described an ideal society.

More refused to take the Oath of Supremacy, which would have acknowledged Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church of England following the king's break with Rome over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He maintained his loyalty to the Catholic Church and the Pope's authority.

He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed for treason on July 6, 1535. His last words reportedly were: "I die the King's good servant, but God's first." He was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1935 and is the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.

St. John Fisher

John Fisher (1469-1545) was an English Catholic bishop, theologian, and Cardinal who served as Bishop of Rochester. He was a respected scholar and educator who defended Catholic doctrine against the Protestant Reformation.

Like More, Fisher refused to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England and opposed the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and made a Cardinal by Pope Clement VII shortly before his execution.

He was beheaded on June 22, 1535. Fisher was also canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1935, along with Thomas More.

Divine allegiance through detachment

I would assert that the ultimate form of detachment is accepting death rather than denying one's faith. Both saints faced execution calmly.  Fisher was made a Cardinal just days before his death, knowing it likely sealed his fate. More spent months in the Tower, writing to his daughter about preparing for death.  I will include one of his poems at the end of the article.

Legacy as models

Both saints are now venerated precisely because they demonstrated that earthly attachments—whether to office, reputation, family, or even life itself—should not supersede fidelity to one's deepest convictions. Their feast day (July 9) commemorates this witness together.

Their story resonates with me, in that as I attempt grow spiritually, I find the world’s allurements are not a match for what Our Lord has promised to those who stay true to the end--“But, as it is written: That eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him.”—1 Corinthians 2-9 

ON DETACHMENT* by St. Thomas More

Tower of London, 1534-35 

Give me Thy grace, good Lord:

 To set the world at naught;

 To set my mind fast upon Thee,

 And not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths;

 To be content to be solitary, 

 Not to long for worldly company;

 Little and little utterly to cast off the world,

 And rid my mind of all the business thereof;

 Not to long to hear of any worldly things,

 But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant; 

 Gladly to be thinking of God,

 Piteously to call for His help;

 To lean unto the comfort of God,

 Busily to labor to love Him;

 To know mine own vility and wretchedness, 

 To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God;

 To bewail my sins past,

 For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity;

 Gladly to bear my purgatory here,

 To be joyful of tribulations; 

 To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,

 To bear the cross with Christ;

 To have the last thing in remembrance,

 To have ever afore mine eye my death, that is ever at hand;

 To make death no stranger to me, 

 To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell;

 To pray for pardon before the judge come,

 To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me;

 For His benefits incessantly to give Him thanks,

 To buy the time again that I before have lost; 

 To abstain from vain confabulations,

 To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness;

 Recreations not necessary, to cut off,

 Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all,

 to set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ; 

 To think my most enemies my best friends,

 For the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good

 with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.

 These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes

 and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all upon one heap. 

* This prayer, without title, was written in the margins of More’s prayer book while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. See volume 13 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (Yale UP, 1976), pp. 226-27.