Thomas More was born in London, 1478. Upon the completion of humanistic studies at Oxford, he studied law in London and became a renowned lawyer. He was for a time very seriously perturbed about his vocation in life, having felt an attraction towards both the Carthusians and Franciscans. He had no assurance of a calling to the religious life or the secular priesthood, so he married in 1505. In 1510 his wife died and in a few weeks he married another, a widow who might take care of his four children, the eldest being barely five years old. He gathered around himself a distinguished circle of poets, scientists and lawyers. In 1504 he was elected to Parliament; in 1518 secretary to Henry VIII and in 1521 was made a knight. In 1529 he became Lord Chancellor of England, succeeding the disgraced Wolsey. In 1516 he published his "Utopia" which gained for him a reputation as a scholar. When his pleadings in the divorce against the anti-Catholic question and tendencies of the king were in vain, he resigned. He refused to take the oath of supremacy, declaring the king to be the supreme head of the Church in England. He was therefore sent to the Tower, sentenced to high treason and was beheaded in 1535. He was the foremost defender of papal supremacy. His cheerfulness and humor, his gentleness and kindness of heart, his high- minded charity and forbearance, his eminent piety, keenness of intellect, intrepid courage and imperturbable tranquility of soul shone forth equally in prosperity, adversity and death. He was canonized in 1925 by Pope Pius XI who called him the "Martyr of the Papacy."

Reflection — St. Thomas More would have been a good candidate for canonization even if he had not died for the Faith. His life shows that holiness is the best preparation against adversity. It enables us to say with Saint Paul: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

Taken from Father Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints for Every Day in the Year — With Reflections" Copyright 1955.