St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher (2026)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here. That you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful.

My immaculate mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

John Fisher was ordained a priest in 1491. He held several teaching posts at the University of Cambridge, and at the same time was responsible for the spiritual direction of Queen Margaret, the mother of Henry VIII. He later occupied the chair of theology which the queen had endowed at Cambridge.

Early in 1504, he was named Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, and at the end of the year was consecrated Bishop of Rochester, the smallest and poorest diocese in England.

Two days later, he was appointed to office as a member of the King’s Council. Thomas More studied literature and philosophy at Oxford and law at the New Inn. In 1504, he was elected a member of parliament and held several public offices. He earned great prestige because of his knowledge of the law and his integrity.

Although his professional life was intensely time-consuming, he always found time for his family, which was his most important concern, and for his literary and historical studies. He published various books and essays. In 1529, he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England, in spite of having made it clear to the King that he would not agree to the dissolution of the King’s marriage.

Taking a full interest in the problems of his day, he dedicated himself to his work with the desire of implementing the laws and institutions of his times with a Christian approach. Both men were beheaded in 1535 for refusing to recognize the supremacy of Henry VIII over the Church in England and the annulment of the King’s marriage.

In England in 1534, all citizens who had come of age were ordered to take the oath unto the Act of Succession, which acknowledged the union of Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn as a marriage. The King proclaimed himself supreme head of the Church in England and denied any authority to the Pope. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and Thomas More, Chancellor of the Realm, both refused to take the oath. They were imprisoned in 1534 and were beheaded the following year.

At a time when many acceded to the royal will, it would scarcely have been noticed if these two had taken the oath. They would have saved their lives, their property, their positions, as so many others did. Both of these men, however, were true to the faith, even to the point of martyrdom.

They were able to give their lives when the time came, because they were of the kind who lived their vocation day by day, giving daily witness to the faith, sometimes in matters that might have seemed of little or no consequence.

Thomas More is a man very close to ourselves because he was an ordinary Christian who knew how to combine, in perfect unity of life, his vocation as the father of a family, with his profession as a lawyer, and later as Lord Chancellor of England. He was at home in the world. He loved all the human realities that formed the framework of his life in the place and position where God wanted him to be.

At the same time, he lived such detachment from earthly things and had such love for the Cross that we can say he drew all of his strength from it. He was in the habit of meditating on a passage of the passion of Our Lord every Friday. When his children or his wife complained about ordinary difficulties and annoyances, he told them they could not expect to go to heaven on feather beds.

He reminded them of the sufferings Our Lord had undergone and that the servant is not greater than his master. As well as using the ordinary little pin pricks and routine mishaps of the day as a means of identifying himself with the Cross, More offered up other penances.

Some days he wore a hair shirt, a garment of rough cloth next to his skin. One writer says he continued this practice during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, in spite of the cold, the damp, and all the privations he had to put up with during those long months. It was here in the Cross that he found his strength.

We are Christians who follow Christ closely in the midst of the world and bear witness to Him, generally silently. We can ask ourselves also, do we find strength in being detached from earthly things and through the daily practice of mortification, penance, and prayer.

When Thomas More had to resign his post as Lord Chancellor, he gathered his family together to talk to them about the future that awaited them and how they would manage financially. He summarized his whole career, saying, “I have been brought up at Oxford, at the Inn of Chancery, at Lincoln’s Inn, and also at the King’s Court. From the lowest to the highest. Yet I now have little above one hundred pounds a year. If we are to continue together, all must become contributors. But my counsel is that it shall not be best for us to fall to the lowest fare first.”

Then he suggested to them a gradual descent, reminding them how it is possible to be content at every level. One writer says, if they were unable to support themselves at even the lowest level, that one at which he had managed to live while in Oxford, he said with peace and good humor, “Then we may yet with bags and wallets go a-begging together, and hoping for, for pity, some good folks will give us of their charity, and so still keep company and be merry together.” He never allowed anything to disturb the unity and peace of his family, even when he was away or in prison.

He lived detached from things when he had them, and with great joy when he did not possess or even have access to even the most indispensable necessities of life. He was always able to rise above circumstances. He knew how to celebrate important events even behind prison bars. A contemporary biographer tells us that while he was imprisoned in the Tower, he would dress more elegantly on important feast days, so far as his meager wardrobe would permit. He always remained cheerful and good-humored, even at the moment when he was ascending the scaffold, because he relied firmly on prayer.

“Good Lord, the things that I pray for,” he said, “give me your grace to labor for.” He did not expect God to give him those things that, with just a little effort on his part, he could obtain for himself. He worked all his life so as to become a lawyer of great prestige before being appointed Lord Chancellor. He never forgot, however, the need for prayer. Even though at times, and particularly in circumstances as dramatic as those leading up to his execution, it was not easy for him.

During those days, he wrote a long prayer in which many of the pious and moving considerations made by a man who knew he was about to die. He exclaimed, “Grant me, my Lord, a desire to be with you, not so as to avoid the calamities of this world, nor even to avoid the pains of purgatory, nor those of hell, nor to gain the joys of heaven, not out of consideration for my own profit, but simply through true love for you.”

St. Thomas More is always presented to us as a man of prayer. St. Josemaría says in The Furrow, “This enabled him to be faithful whatever the circumstances, to his commitments as a citizen and as a Christian. Thereby living a perfect unity of life. This is how we too have to be. A Catholic without prayer is the same as a soldier without arms.” We could ask ourselves, well how is my relationship with Christ?

Do I try to grow each day in intimacy with Him? Does my prayer influence the rest of my day? He prayed, “Give me the grace, Good Lord, to set the world at naught. To have my mind well united to you. To not depend on the changing opinions of others. So that I may think joyfully of God, and tenderly implore your help. So that I may lean on God’s strength and make an effort to love Him. So as to thank Him ceaselessly for His benefits. So as to redeem the time I have wasted.”

The saint wrote these words in the margin of the Book of Hours he had with him in the Tower of London. They were days in which he gave himself over completely to contemplating the Passion, and in this way to preparing himself for his own death in union with the death Christ suffered on the cross.

Saint Thomas’s last moments on earth were seen not only by God. His love for God had been clear to everyone around him, day by day in his family life, in his simple, pleasant manner, in the way he carried out his profession as a lawyer, in holding the highest post in the land, that of Lord Chancellor.

It was through fulfilling the duties of each day, some of which were important, others less important, that he sanctified himself and helped others to find God. Among many other examples of his effective apostolate, he has left us that of the apostolate he did with his son-in-law, who had fallen into the Lutheran heresy.

He said to his daughter, “I have borne a long time with your husband. I have reasoned and argued with him on these points of religion, and given to him my poor fatherly counsel, but I perceive none of this is able to call him home, and therefore, Meg, I will no longer dispute with him, but will give him over, and get me to God to pray for him.”

More’s words and prayers were effective, as soon afterwards, Roper returned to the fullness of the faith and afterwards suffered much through remaining loyal to the Catholic faith. Saint Thomas More remains among us as a living example for our conduct as Christians. He is the fruitful seed of peace and joy.

As was his passage on earth, at home among his family and friends, in the law courts, in the university chair, at court, in the embassies, in parliament, and in government. He is also a silent patron of England who shed his blood in defense of the unity of the Church and of the spiritual power of the Vicar of Christ.

One writer says, “As the blood of Christians is a germinating seed, the blood of Thomas More slowly seeps into and soaks the souls of those who approach him, drawn by his prestige, his sweetness of character, and his strength. More will be the silent apostle of the return to the faith of a whole nation.”

We can ask John Fisher and Thomas More to teach us to imitate them in their Christian coherence, so that we may live as God wants us to in all things, both great and small, whatever the circumstances of our lives. The opening prayer of today’s Mass says, “In the death of your martyrs, O God, we see the noblest of testimonies to the true faith. Grant we pray that strengthened by the prayers of Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher, we may bear witness in our lives to the faith we confess with our lips.”

When we contemplate the lives of these great saints, also of the English-speaking world, we could note the first necessary step in persevering to the end of the way: that desire of wanting to be a saint. We could ask them for those real and effective desires. The psalms we read, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for you, O God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Ps. 42:2–3).

The deer attempting to quench its thirst with water is the psalmist’s symbolic way of describing the desire for God present in the heart of an upright person. A thirst and vehement desire for God. Such is the aspiration of one who is not content to accept worldly success as the satisfaction for human ambitions. We’re told in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” (Matt. 16:26).

Our Lord’s question forces us to take a radical look at the broad horizon of our life to which only God gives ultimate meaning. “My soul thirsts for God.” Saint Josemaría says, “The saints are not abnormally gifted people, nor have they necessarily been completely perfect since childhood. They are men and women with a great desire to belong to God completely, despite their defects.” We could each ask ourselves, “Have I a true desire to be a saint?”

The answer most assuredly would be in the affirmative, yes. But our reply should not be as to a theoretical question, he says, “Because for some, holiness is unattainable, something to do with ascetical theology, but not a real goal, a living reality.”

“We want to make it happen with the help of God’s grace. So longs my soul for you, O God.” We have to start by making the desire for holiness flourish in our own soul, telling Our Lord, “I want to be a saint, or at least when I experience my softness and weakness, I want to want to be a saint.”

To banish doubt and make holiness more than an empty word, we need to turn and look at Christ. The Second Vatican Council says, “The Lord Jesus, the divine teacher and model of all perfection, preached holiness of life, of which he is the author and maker, to each and every one of his disciples without distinction” (Lumen Gentium, 40).

“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). He has taken the initiative. If He had not, the possibility of being a saint would never have occurred to us. Jesus put it to us as a command, “Be perfect.” It is not surprising that the Church makes sure her children hear these resounding words.

Therefore, all the faithful, says the Second Vatican Council, are invited and obliged to holiness and the perfection of their own state of life. Think then how deep our desire for holiness has to be. In Scripture, the prophet Daniel is “a man of desires” (Dan. 9:23).

It would be wonderful if we were all worthy of such a title. The first thing that souls must do if they embark on the path of holiness, says St. Teresa, is really to want to be saints, whatever may come, whatever may happen to them, however hard they may have to labor, whoever may complain of them, whether they reach their goal or die on the road.

In The Furrow, we’re told, “Allow your soul to be consumed by desires, desires for loving, for forgetting yourself, for sanctity, for heaven. Do not stop to wonder whether the time will come for seeing them accomplished, as some pseudo-advisor might suggest. Make them more fervent each day, for the Holy Spirit says that He is pleased with men of desires.”

“Let your desires be operative and put them into practice in your daily tasks.” We should examine our conscience to see if our desires for holiness are sincere and effective, and furthermore to see if we take them as something obligatory for a faithful Christian, as the Second Vatican Council states, in response to God’s desires.

This response could reveal the reason for so much apathy and weakness in our interior struggle. In The Way, we’re told, “You tell me yes, you want to. Very good, but do you want to as a miser longs for gold, as a mother loves her child, as a worldling craves for honors, or as a wretched sensualist seeks his pleasure?”

“No, then you don’t really want to.” We could try to develop these desires with the virtue of hope. One can only effectively desire something when there is a hope of attaining it. If we consider some aim to be impossible and not for us, we will not really desire it. Our theological hope rests on God.

Softness and lukewarmness can destroy our desires for holiness. There is need for vigilance. The conversion of Cornelius the Centurion, mentioned in today’s Mass, in the first reading, shows that God is no respecter of persons. Saint Peter explains to the others what has happened. The Holy Spirit, we’re told in the Acts, “fell upon them just as on us at the beginning” (Acts 11:15).

There are no limits or barriers to the power of the Holy Spirit. This is true in our case, just as it was for Cornelius, who was not a Jew by race or nation. On the one hand, we have to want to be saints, but we must also take into account that we’re told in the Psalms that, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1).

Humility leads us to count always above all on God’s grace. To this we add our efforts to acquire virtues and practice them continuously, and our apostolic zeal, since our concept of personal holiness should not be one which ignores others or which is indifferent to charity. That would be contradictory.

There is our desire to be with Christ on the Cross. That is, to be mortified, not rejecting sacrifice in small things, and if need be in big things. We should be forewarned about approaching God with reservations and without renunciation, trying to make the love of God compatible with what is not pleasing to Him.

We should be alert in developing our desires for holiness continually through prayer, by asking God for the ability to struggle each day, to discover in our examination of conscience the places where our love is growing cold. Saint John of the Cross says, “Desire for holiness is real when we fulfill acts of piety with refinement, not omitting them or delaying them for any reason whatever, refusing to be led by our moods and feelings.”

Because the soul truly in love with God never fails through laziness to do all in its power to seek God’s Son the Beloved. And having done all it could, is still not satisfied as it thinks it has done nothing. The virtue of humility enables us to avoid a sense of self-satisfaction with what we have done, and not to be content with ineffectual desires.

It lets us see how we can do more to show the sincerity of our desires with deeds of love, ensuring that our sins, offenses, and negligences don’t frustrate our expectations. Humility doesn’t clip the wings of our desires, but rather helps us to understand the need to have recourse to God to make them come true. With God’s grace, we can do all in our power to make virtue grow in our soul by removing obstacles, fleeing from occasions of sin, and bravely resisting temptations. We should avoid discouragement in the struggle to improve.

We have to count on time and on God’s grace. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:2). St. Josemaría says, “Is this thirst compatible with our experience of our defects and even our falls? Yes, because saints are not those who have never sinned, but those who have always got up again.” Refusal to pursue holiness and seeing ourselves full of defects is a hidden form of pride and obvious cowardice which will end up stifling our desires for God. “Feeling easily deflated,” says St. Josemaría, “and lying down under adversity is characteristic of cowardly souls lacking the firm virtue of trusting in God’s promises.”

Abandoning God, ceasing to struggle because of our defects when there is opposition is a serious mistake. A very subtle and dangerous temptation, which can lead us to that form of pride called pusillanimity, lack of courage and strength to bear misfortune or undertake large enterprises. We may need to rid ourselves of false illusions in wanting to be saints in a day. That would be impossible, unless God decided to perform a miracle, which He has no reason to do, since He gives us all the graces we need by ordinary means in a continuous and progressive way.

One writer says, “An effective desire for holiness consists in a conscious and determined effort to use the necessary means to attain holiness.” If desire is lacking, nothing can be done. One doesn’t even try. Desires alone are not enough. We must be patient then, and not try to banish in a day the many habits we have picked up in neglecting our spiritual health. “As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God” (Ps. 42:1). We could almost hear those words on the lips and heart of St. Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher.

Let us try to keep our desire for God alive, to enkindle the flame of faith and hope in the fire of the love of God, enlivening our virtues and burning away our miseries. We will quench our thirst for holiness with the water that springs up to eternal life. And always our mother will be there to help us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW