On my retreat earlier this year our priest observed that nearly all of the world’s crises are really a “crisis of sanctity.” Of men and women either settling for mediocrity because they believe sanctity to be out of their reach or even rejecting sanctity with an “only the good die young” attitude about life. In light of that on today’s feast of St. Thomas More, I can’t help quoting extensively from Archbishop Chaput’s Render Unto Caesar (see Ch. 9) on why the example of this great statesman is just as relevant today as it was in sixteenth century England:

More was a brilliant lawyer, gifted author, tough political figure and loving father and husband — but most importantly, he was a person with the courage to say no, even when saying no meant humiliation and suffering. More was a man of principle guided by a properly formed conscience, who died rather than betray either. And this is the reason More’s life is relevant even today.

The modern interest in Thomas More has nothing to do with nostalgia for the sixteenth century. It stems from something else. More offers us a model we yearn for but too often lack in our own daily choices and public leaders…a live lived with courage and conviction, the same virtues that each of us is called to embrace as citizens and as Catholics.
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More became the saint God wanted not only by dramatic words or gestures. He did it by the simple daily habit of examining his actions in the light of his faith. He fed his conscience with prayer. He submitted himself to the routine of seeking and choosing what his Catholic formation knew to be right. This same path to God is open to anyone who sincerely seeks it. Too often we look at the saints and focus on the end result of their lives. We delude ourselves into imagining that sainthood is exclusive; that holiness involves extraordinary gifts. It isn’t. It doesn’t. God created all of us to be saints. The only thing that sets a saint like More apart from the rest of us is that he persevered in his pursuit of God’s will without excuses or alibis. More’s life was never easy. He had many talents, but he worked tirelessly to develop them. The same gifts that make him a great lawyer and statesman also offered him the biggest temptations to serious sin: ambition, greed, the abuse of power and pride.

Through his private life, More teaches us the beauty of family, friendship, and love. In his public life, More teaches us the gravity of politics and the use and misuse of state authority.
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More believed he had to follow his conscience, but not because he thought he was smarter or holier than anyone else. He would have quickly seen that for what it is: vanity. More obeyed his conscience because he knew he was obligated to obey God first. And knowing his personal sins and weaknesses, he also knew his duty to rightly form his conscience by anchoring it in truth outside his own will…His sacrifice was not an act of self-assertion. It was the opposite. It was an act of obedience. Only thus to More’s last words make sense as he neared the scaffold: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
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While candidates don’t go to the scaffold in American political life, they can still lose their careers, and they can most certainly lose their integrity. Given the power of the United States, the witness of Thomas More has value for every Catholic public official, today more than ever.
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The witness of Thomas More remains strong for a reason. God may not call us to by martyrs in blood, but he certainly does call us to be martyrs of the daily kind – the kind who live lives with courage and Catholic conviction; the kind who demand personal integrity and good public policy from our political leaders. Each of us shapes the spirit of our nation. Each of us helps choose the direction our country will take in the future. Citizenship, as More well understood, is serious business. we need to recover the character to say yes to what our country needs, no to what it doesn’t, and the good sense to know the difference.

St. Thomas More, pray for us!