Preview: St. Thomas More on "Every good gift" and Grace

As promised, we'll continue our discussion of Saint Thomas More's Treatise to Receive the Blessed Body of Our Lord on Monday, October 24 on the Son Rise Morning Show. 

So I'll be on about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern in the last segment of the second EWTN hour (there's a local hour after that just on Sacred Heart Radio). You may listen live here.

Saint Thomas More read and knew the Holy Bible very well. In his introduction to the Yale University volume of More's complete works that includes this treatise, Garry E. Haupt believes that More quoted Bible verses from memory (in Latin). Haupt also suggests that in 1534 More had two books with him in the Tower: the Catena Aurea of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Monotesseron of Jean Gerson, which provided him with passages from the Fathers of the Church and a harmony of the Gospels.

Furthermore, Haupt notes that More, like the other Christian Humanists of his time (John Colet, Erasmus, St. John Fisher, and others), while being most concerned about the literal meaning of Sacred Scripture, did not ignore the spiritual and moral applications of that meaning to the reader. In the three paragraphs we'll examine Monday on the Son Rise Morning Show, these concerns of More are readily displayed.

For example, More applies this verse from the Letter of St. James (1:17) to how Catholics should consider the gift of Holy Communion as one of the Father's good and perfect gifts, and how we should respond to that good and perfect gift with prayer and intention:

But for-as-much (good Christian readers) as we neither can attain this great point of Faith, nor any other virtue, but by the Special Grace of God of whose high goodness every good thing cometh, (for as St. James saith: "Omne datum optimum et omne donum perfectum, desursum est descendens a Patre luminum: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above descending from the Father of Lights"), let us therefore pray for His gracious help in the attaining of His Faith, and for His help in the cleansing of our soul against His coming, that He may make us worthy to receive Him worthily. 

Saint Thomas More balances God's Grace and our response to it in the best Catholic tradition:

And ever let us of our own part, fear our unworthiness, and on His part, trust boldly upon His goodness, if we are slow not to work with him for our own part. For if we willingly upon the trust and comfort of His goodness leave our own endeavour undone, then is our hope, no hope, but a very foul presumption.

More stated before that we cannot achieve any worthiness to receive Holy Communion on our own, but here he reminds us that we must cooperate with God's goodness, and that there is merit in doing so.

He further gives some instruction on what to do even as we go to receive the Eucharist with thoughts that certainly echo St. Thomas Aquinas' Adore Te Devote:

Then, when we come unto His Holy Board, into the Presence of His Blessed Body, let us consider His high glorious Majesty) which His high goodness there hideth from us, and the proper form of His holy Flesh covereth under the form of bread, both to keep us from abashment, such as we could not peradventure abide if we (such as we yet be) should see and receive Him in His own Form, such as He is, and also for the increase of the merit of our Faith in the obedient belief of that thing at His commandment, whereof our eyes and our reason seem to show us the contrary.

As Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ translated two verses of Aquinas's hymn:

Godhead here in hiding
Whom I do adore
Masked by these bare shadows,
Shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at Thy service
Low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder
At the God Thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting
Are in Thee deceived;
How says trusty hearing?
That shall be believed;
What God’s Son has told me,
Take for truth I do;
Truth Himself speaks truly
Or there’s nothing true.

Remember that Pope Urban IV had added the feast of Corpus Christi to the universal Church’s liturgical calendar in 1264 and that this feast was celebrated with great devotion in England before the Reformation, with processions comparable to those on Holy Thursday and the performance of the Mystery Plays, which enacted salvation history from Creation to the Second Coming.

Finally, More strings together passages from the Gospels, like pearls of prayer for an increase of faith:

And yet, for-as-much as although we believe it, yet is there therein many of us) that believe very faint, and far from the point of such vigour and strength, as would God it had, let us say unto Him with the father that had the dumb son: "Credo, Domine, adjuva incredulitatem meam--I believe, Lord, but help thou my lack of belief" (Mark 9:24), and with His blessed Apostles, "Domine, adauge nobis fidem: Lord increase Faith in us" (Luke 17:5). Let us also with the poor publican in knowledge of our own unworthiness say with all meekness of heart, "Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori: Lord God be merciful to me, sinner that I am." (Luke 18:13) And with the Centurion, "Domine non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum (Matt. 8), Lord I am not worthy, that thou shouldst come into my house." (Matt. 8:8)

We'll conclude this series next week, on All Hallows' Eve (Halloween) on October 31, with the end of St. Thomas More's brief treatise on how to receive the Holy Eucharist as worthily as possible.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Top Image Credit (Public Domain): Lord, I Am Not Worthy (Domine Non Sum Dignus) - James Tissot

Lower Image Credit (Public Domain): The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, presented in three scenes. Middle: the Pharisee kneels before the altar; Left: the proud Pharisee leaves with a devil; Right: the tax collector leaves with an angel. (Barent Fabritius, 1661)