Preview: St. Thomas More, the Four Last Things and Purgatory

On Monday, March 11, the Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent 2024, we'll conduct our next segment on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation", focusing on another section of his prayer. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

I've picked up a few lines from last week's post because they fit in so well with More's theme of repentance and preparation for the four last things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. As part of his preparation, he suggests to us, I propose, the traditional meditation on death, and the desire to avoid suffering in Purgatory after judgment by accepting suffering while we live:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.

These are all sobering thoughts: as Christians we all know that we will die, face judgment, and either spend our eternal life in Heaven or Hell. We know the choice we face: choose life or choose death. At times the notion of death can be abstract or distant from us, even as we attend the funerals of friends and family, but once we've been at a couple of deathbeds--as I have--we know it's inevitable.

More had written a meditation on Death before in an unfinished collaboration with his daughter Margaret on The Four Last Things. In that work, he emphasizes how thinking of Death, based upon Sirach 7:36 ("Remember the last things, and you will never sin"), can help us avoid sin, especially the Seven Deadly Sins, and develop their opposite virtues in preparation for the joys of Heaven.

In this prayer More's traditional Catholic piety emphasizes the most somber side of this meditation on the Four Last Things: he does not meditate on the joys of Heaven, but considers the "everlasting fire of hell". The only hint of Heaven is that his preparation "leadeth to life". He is praying to find joy and gladness in the midst of his tribulations with the consolation that they can prepare him for the joys of heaven. In his desire to expiate the temporal effects of his past sins, confessed and forgiven, More wants to avoid Purgatory--a Catholic doctrine he'd defended in The Supplication of Souls in answer to Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars--after death: to "go straight to Heaven" and the presence of God.

We can juxtapose this somber meditation with More's repeatedly stated hope that he and his family, friends, even those who would condemn him, sentence him, and prepare him for execution would "meet merrily in Heaven". As he prayed in his Treatise on the Passion:

Good Lord, give me the grace so to spend my life that when the day of my death shall come, though I feel pain in my body, I may feel comfort in soul and – with faithful hope of Your mercy, in due love towards You and charity towards the world – I may, through Your grace, depart hence into Your glory. Amen.

and

Almighty Jesus Christ, who would for our example observe the law that You came to change and, being Maker of the whole earth, would have yet no dwelling-house therein: give us Your grace so to keep Your holy law and so to reckon ourselves for no dwellers but for pilgrims upon earth that we may long and make haste, walking with faith in the way of virtuous works, to come to the glorious country wherein You have bought us inheritance forever with Your own precious blood. Amen.

I look forward to my discussion with Anna or Matt on Monday!