July 6

Spiritual Bouquet: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. St. Mark 12:30

SAINT THOMAS MORE
Martyr
(1480-1535)

Saint Thomas More, born in 1480, was the precocious and amiable son of an English magistrate. Very well educated and brilliant, when he was placed at the age of fifteen in the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he soon attracted the Archbishop’s attention, and was sent by him to study at Oxford. He debated interiorly for a long time as to whether he should become a priest, but decided otherwise with the approbation of his director.

The practice of civil law was not enough to absorb all his time or energy. The author of the famous satire “Utopia,” wrote poetry while still young, in both English and Latin. He had completely mastered Latin, as he had also the Greek tongue, “by an instinct of genius,” as one of his preceptors said. Saint Thomas in 1505 married a virtuous and beloved wife who, after bearing four children, three daughters and a son, died six years later. His second wife, older than himself, took excellent care of the household and of the children; but it was said she could not grasp the sense of her husband’s subtle humor, which was a characteristic trait of his cheerful disposition.

Saint Thomas came under suspicion by King Henry VII when he strove in the Parliament to reduce the burden of excessive taxes which the people bore, though he never spoke against the king. But his capacities were appreciated, and when Henry VII died, his 18-year-old son, who was to become Henry VIII in 1509, showed him great favor during the first twenty years of his reign. Saint Thomas was knighted in 1521, and was made Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, High Steward of Cambridge University in 1525, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the same year. Nonetheless, the king’s protege foresaw what could easily happen to anyone who did not agree with his sovereign; he said to his son-in-law in 1525, “If my head could win him a castle in France, it would not fail to go.” In effect, when in 1530 the order was issued to the clergy to acknowledge Henry as “Supreme Head of the Church, insofar as the law of God would permit,” Saint Thomas immediately resigned as Lord Chancellor.

His resignation was not accepted. Two years later, in May 1532, after he had lost the royal favor on several counts — his reticence concerning the king’s divorce, his non-attendance at the king’s illegal marriage, and his formal non-recognition of any future children of Henry and Anne Bolyn as rightful heirs to the throne — he was permitted to retire. The king, the apostate Archbishop Cranmer, and Anne Bolyn were all excommunicated in that year.

Saint Thomas lived in retirement from the age of 52, his revenues considerably diminished, and his health somewhat uncertain. When the king decided to require of the laity, as well as of the clergy, the oath supporting his alleged “supremacy,” he wanted to obtain first of all the signature of Thomas More, to make of him an example. The Saint declined to sign the oath and thereby brought upon himself a sentence of incarceration in the Tower of London, and a short time afterwards, of death. He was beheaded in 1535, after having said, with his ordinary humor, that “he did not consider the severing of his head from his body as a circumstance that should produce any change in the disposition of his mind.”

Saint Thomas while in retirement continued to write a number of religious treatises of great value, including an unfinished one on the Passion. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII and canonized by Pius XI in 1935, with Cardinal John Fisher, who was martyred like himself in the same year and for the same reasons. That year was the 400^th anniversary of their death.

Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia, edited by C. G. Herbermann with numerous collaborators (Appleton Company: New York, 1908).

SAINT GOAR
Priest and Hermit
(†575)

Saint Goar was born in the time of Childebert I, son of Clovis, of an illustrious family in Aquitaine. From his youth he was noted for his earnest piety, and having been raised by his bishop to sacred orders, he converted many sinners by the force of his example and the fervor of his preaching against all the contemporary disorders. But wishing to serve God entirely unknown to the world, he went into a region where he would be unidentified, and settling in the neighborhood of Trier in Germany, he built a small church and a hermitage, then retired into prayer.

 He came forth after a time and began preaching in the area to the pagans, who opened their eyes to the truth of the Gospel. Miracles seconded his teaching; he cured the sick and the lame by prayer and the sign of the cross. Saint Goar reached so eminent a sanctity as to be esteemed the oracle and miracle of the whole country. He practiced hospitality to the poor and to pilgrims, lodging them in his hermitage which he enlarged for that purpose; hospitality is the particular virtue for which he is and was then known.

Nonetheless certain jealous persons calumniated him as a hypocrite, and the bishop of Trier sent for him. When he entered the episcopal palace, Saint Goar mistook a ray of sunshine for a coat hook and suspended his cloak upon it. The bishop took this for a sign he was a magician. He excused himself for the miracle he had not even noticed. He told his bishop that if sometimes he had served an early breakfast on the days when fasting was not obligatory, he had done so out of charity for his guests, not by intemperance. And he added that “it was a great error to place all perfection in fasting and abstinence, since the greatest Saints have always recognized that charity is to be preferred.”

The King of Austrasia, Sigebert, learning of the sanctity of Saint Goar, wished to have him consecrated a bishop, and for that purpose summoned him to court. The Saint had already offered to do penance for seven years for a fault of the bishop of Trier which had become known. Saint Goar feared the responsibilities of the episcopal office and prayed that he might be excused, saying that his role was a different one. He was seized with a fever, from which he suffered as an invalid for seven years before he died in 575. A city in Germany is named for him, near Coblentz.

Sources: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894); Les Petits Bollandistes: Vies des Saints, by Msgr. Paul Guérin (Bloud et Barral: Paris, 1882), Vol. 8.

SAINT PALLADIUS
First Bishop and Apostle of the Scots
(†ca. 450)

The name Palladius marks Saint Palladius as a Roman; and a seventh century Irish biography of Saint Patrick identifies him as Archdeacon of the Roman Church under Pope Celestine. Saint Prosper of Aquitaine, his contemporary, informs us in his historical chronicle that when Agricola, a noted Pelagian, had corrupted the churches of Britain by introducing that pestilential heresy, Pope Celestine, at the instance of Palladius the deacon, in 429 sent there Saint Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, as his legate. He, after having ejected the heretics, brought back the Britons to the Catholic faith.

The same Pope sent Palladius to the Celts. The Irish writer of the life of Saint Patrick says that Palladius preached in Ireland some time before Saint Patrick, but that he was soon sent away by the King of Leinster and returned to North Britain, where he had opened his mission. Saint Prosper says that he was consecrated bishop by the same Pope Celestine, and then sent with relics of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, as first bishop to the nation of the Christian Scots. Several colonies of these had passed from Ireland into North Britain and taken possession of the part of the country since called Scotland. Later Saint Palladius also founded three churches in more hospitable regions of Ireland.

He preached to the Scots with great zeal, and formed a considerable church. The Scottish historians tell us that the Faith was first planted in North Britain about the year 200, in the time of King Donald, when Saint Victor I was Pope; but they all acknowledge that Palladius was the first bishop of that country, and they call him their first Apostle. Saint Palladius died at Fordun, fifteen miles from Aberdeen, about the year 450.

Reflection: Saint Palladius surmounted the obstacles which a fierce nation opposed to the establishment of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Ought not our hearts to be impressed with the most lively sentiments of love and gratitude to our merciful God, for having raised up such great and zealous men, by whose ministry the light of true faith has been conveyed to us?

Source: Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, a compilation based on Butler’s Lives of the Saints, and other sources by John Gilmary Shea (Benziger Brothers: New York, 1894).