God’s Good Servants: Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher

“The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them.” —St. Thomas More “A good man is not a perfect man; a good man is an honest man, faithful and unhesitatingly responsive to the voice of God in his life.” —St. John Fisher “What part soever you take upon you, play that as well as you can and make the best of it.” —St. Thomas More

Today is the feast of the great writer, thinker, intellectual, lawyer, politician, father, friend, saint, and martyr Thomas More. It is also the feast of Bishop John Fisher, contemporary of More’s, and of St. Alban, the first British martyr. More and Fisher were two great English martyrs killed for being faithful to true Christian doctrine in the bloody persecutions of King Henry VIII.

More was a leader of a new intellectual movement, a defender of the faith, a devoted father, a revolutionary thinker, and a brilliant lawyer and orator. Indeed, More, though he did struggle and fall along the way as all men do, was one of the few thinkers in history who largely lived up to his own philosophy and theology. He was beloved of almost all until he would not bend the truth to suit the king’s convenience.

Thomas More lost everything—his wealth, his status, his family, even his life—because he knew that denying the truth was a grave sin. In our time, men lie, dissemble, and compromise without a thought. We are told: Compromise is necessary…tolerance is virtue…we cannot hurt anyone’s feelings…you will lose your promotion if you don’t go along. How often do we take the coward’s way out when even a tiny risk is involved! Yet Thomas More was impoverished, humiliated, and executed because he would not sign his name to a paper. That is the stuff of which saints are made.

And it is because he sacrificed everything that we still honor him. Henry VIII, the king who executed More, is still remembered, but nearly everyone—even the members of the heretical church he founded—remember him as a villain. Thomas More’s image and name are honored in churches around the world. I recently visited the Tower of London, where both More and Fisher were imprisoned. One of the Beefeaters, a guard working for the English monarchy, stood below the windows where More and Fisher had sat (see below) and told us, “They were good men who died for what they believed in.” In the very spot they were imprisoned and executed, they are now praised.