Rector’s Reflections
Wednesday 5th February 2025
Why Thomas More Matters
Here’s a question for you: if you were unjustly imprisoned and given the opportunity to write a book during your imprisonment, what would you write about? Would your book be angry in tone? Or would you be philosophical about your fate?
Thomas spent the last year or so of his life as a prisoner of conscience in the Tower of London, and during this period he was able to write a couple of books. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that Thomas was not going to be released from his imprisonment, but that he would go from the Tower to his execution as a traitor. Thomas himself may well have suspected that this was going to be his fate, but there again he might have hoped or suspected that Henry VIII would change his mind, and that in due course he would be released from the Tower. In any event, Thomas made the most of the opportunity to sit down and write.
One of the books Thomas wrote during his imprisonment was called the Dialogue of Comfort , and it has become a minor spiritual classic. It appears to be a debate between a Hungarian nobleman, called Anthony, and his young nephew, called Vincent. At this time, Turkish armies were threatening the Christian countries of South Eastern Europe, and the subject matter of the debate between Anthony and Vincent is how good Catholics should behave if they had to live under Turkish rule. Of course, Thomas is drawing a parallel between life as a Christian under an Islamic state and life as a Christian under Henry VIII. Thomas was arguing that no head of State, whether Islamic or Christian, had the right to dictate the religious belief of their subjects.
This might be good in theory, but Thomas was well aware that the head of a State had the power to imprison and kill their subjects. It was all very well to say that rulers did not have the right to trample on the conscience of their subjects, but in practice what was to stop them from doing so?
Thomas thought it helped to get things in perspective. Human rulers think they are incredibly important people, but the reality is that they will die, just like everyone else. And then what will have happened to all their pomp and pride? It will rot away in their coffin, along with their flesh and bones. Their pitiful fate can be contrasted with the heavenly life which awaits those who have been faithful to their Christian beliefs, and who have stood up for what they believe to be true. In the words of Thomas: “St.John the Baptist was, you [know] well, in prison, while Herod and Herodias sat full merry at the feast, and the daughter of Herodias daughter them with her dancing, till with her dancing she danced off St John’s dead. And now sitteth he with great feast in heaven at God’s board”. So we can trust that faithful witness to God will be rewarded in the life to come.
And we can also remind ourselves that Jesus himself did not enter heaven without suffering pain and death. Jesus had to endure Good Friday, and so we too, as his followers, can expect to experience our own Good Fridays too. Thomas writes about this in the following words: “Our head is Christ: and therefore to him must we be joined, and as members of his must we follow him, if we will come thither. He is our guide to guide us thither….[Know] you not that Christ must suffer passion , and by that way enter into his kingdom? Who can for very shame desire to enter into the Kingdom of Christ with ease, when himself entered not into his own without pain?” [I owe these quotes from Thomas’ Dialogue of Comfort to R.W.Chambers, who includes them in his well-regarded biography of More, first published back in 1935].
So More is trying to comfort those Christians who are suffering persecution for the sake of their conscience. He reminds us that even the mightiest of tyrants have their day: they will die, and with their death their vaunted power will come to an end. But the faithful followers of Jesus will be rewarded in the life to come. And in the meantime, any follower of Christ needs to accustom themselves to the reality of suffering. To quote Thomas’ phrase, we should not expect to “enter into the Kingdom of Christ with ease”.
I wonder if most of us have forgotten this? We would much rather enter the Kingdom of Christ with ease, and if this option is unavailable, we prefer not to enter the Kingdom of Christ at all. Has our Christianity become little more than an exercise in undemanding indolence?