Saint Thomas More

Of the saints whose optional memorials fall on this day, none stands as tall – especially in the English-speaking world – as St. Thomas More.

He was the finest example of the Renaissance Man in every sense of the term: one of the great intellects and writers of the Renaissance and also a man who excelled in multiple fields of endeavor – literally, a man for all seasons. He wrote many important works and coined the oft-misunderstood word “utopia.” He was a statesman who helped guide England during a most tumultuous period. He was a devoted husband and father.

He was also a firm believer in Christ and in the Catholic Church and ultimately was martyred for that faith. He did not seek death: he was prudent and careful, but neither would he relinquish that in which he believed.

Oddly enough, although he died in the 16th century, it was in the 20th century that his prominence came to shine brightly again. It was then that he was finally canonized and that a great play about his life was written: “A Man for All Seasons” by Robert Bolt, a masterpiece with more quotable lines and scenes than perhaps any play in the English language since Shakespeare’s day.

St. Thomas More himself continued writing to the very end: if only with charcoal on scraps of paper, because everything else had been taken away. The last thing he wrote, the day before his execution, was a letter of loving farewell to his daughter, in which he said,

“to-morrow long I to go to God.”