Preview: Praying for the Intercession of St. John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show

As a preparation for the feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, I've been listening to this CD of a Mass featuring the Propers for their Feast (the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, and Communion antiphons), William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices, and four motets, also composed by William Byrd. I purchased it from Aid to the Church in Need UK. It's recorded by Cantores Missae:

1. Introit – Multae tribulationes (chant)
2. Kyrie
3. Gloria
4. Gradual & Alleluia – Accedire ad eum (chant)
5. Credo
6. Offertory – Mirabilis Deus (chant)
7. Motet – O quam gloriosum*
8. Motet – Justorum animae*
9. Sanctus & Benedictus
10. Agnus Dei
11. Communion – Oves meae (chant)
12. Motet – Ego sum panis vivus
13. Motet – Ave verum corpus

I've also been preparing for their feast by arranging a couple of interviews on the Son Rise Morning Show--one on St. John Fisher tomorrow June 22, on their shared feast (the anniversary of his martyrdom in 1535) and one on St. Thomas More on July 6, the anniversary of his martyrdom the same year. We're going to focus on each of them, not just as the great models of faithfulness they were on earth, but also on their heavenly role as intercessors. PLEASE NOTE WELL (N.B.): I'm on the show at an earlier time than usual: 6:20 a.m. Central/7:20 a.m. Eastern. You may listen live here on EWTN or on your local EWTN affiliate.

It's appropriate to intercede with Saint John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, named a Cardinal by Pope Paul III while Fisher was in the Tower of London, for our bishops, archbishops, and cardinal archbishops. 

Years ago, at our annual Midwest Catholic Family Conference here in Wichita, Kansas, a bookstore named for St. John Fisher brought hundreds of books from Jacksonville, Illinois to sell. Each time (many, many times) I bought a book from their booth, I received a holy card with a Prayer for Holy Bishops by St. John Fisher:

Lord, according to Thy promise that the Gospel should be preached throughout the whole world, raise up men fit for such work. The Apostles were but soft and yielding clay till they were baked hard by the fire of the Holy Ghost. So, good Lord, do now in like manner with Thy Church militant, change and make the soft and slippery earth into hard stones. Set in the Thy Church strong and mighty pillars that may suffer and endure great labors--watching, poverty, thirst, hunger, cold and heat--which also shall not fear the threatenings of princes, persecution, neither death, but always persuade and think with themselves to suffer with a good will, slanders, shame, and all kinds of torments, for the glory and laud of Thy Holy Name. By this manner, good Lord, the truth of Thy Gospel shall be preached throughout the world. Therefore, merciful Lord, exercise Thy mercy, show it indeed upon Thy Church. Amen.

According to the holy card, St. John Fisher included this prayer in a sermon he preached in 1508, 27 years before his martyrdom. It was part of his sermon on Psalm 101 in a series on the Seven Penitential Psalms.

It's also appropriate to ask Fisher's intercession for the defense of marriage; he defended the validity of Katherine of Aragon's marriage to Henry VIII, acting as her counselor. Cardinal Wolsey had asked him to study the matter in 1527 and he reported to Wolsey and the king that the declaration of nullity of her previous marriage to Arthur, the Prince of Wales, was indeed valid and that Henry and Katherine were validly, sacramentally, and truly married. Once Fisher had reached that conclusion he never wavered. In the Convocation of Bishops and at the Legatine Court in 1529, he defended his position.

He's also an appropriate patron saint of university administrators and theology professors, because of his efforts at Cambridge and Oxford University to found chairs of divinity with the help of his patron the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's grandmother. Fisher was Chancellor of the University of Cambridge for life in 1514 (until Henry VIII intervened, of course).

Finally, it's indeed appropriate to ask St. John Fisher to intercede for us to remain faithful to Jesus, to live simply, detached from worldly pleasures, and to be attentive to our duties. Throughout his service at Bishop of Rochester he was remarkable at that time for being resident in the diocese, fulfilling his duties as teacher and priest to his people, for his simplicity of living and generosity to the poor.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

The Story of Blessed John Story

Blessed John Story experienced and was involved in all the religious changes of the Tudor Dynasty during each reign: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. He endured imprisonment and exile, torture and execution, success and failure at the University of Oxford, in Parliament, and at Court:

John Story or Storey was born in northern England in 1504 and educated at the University of Oxford. He became a Doctor of Law and served at the President of Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) from 1537 to 1539.

John might have fallen away briefly from the Catholic Church or at least decided that he could accept the king’s control of the Church in England, for he did take Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy. After becoming a member of the House of Commons for Hindon in Wiltshire in southwest England in 1547, he seems to have reverted. (He also got married to a woman named Joan in 1547.) In 1549 he protested against the Act of Uniformity introduced in Parliament by the government of young king Edward VI. This Act promulgated Thomas Cranmer’s new Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England.

This law was controversial in Parliament and John Story spoke against it—and against the boy king. Because he cried out “Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child,” the House of Commons imprisoned him.

Eventually, House of Commons released John Story; he and his family went into exile in Louvain in the Low Countries under the rule of Spain, now in Belgium. There he joined the faculty at the University of Louvain and the community of English Catholic exiles, including William Rastell, Thomas More’s nephew and publisher.

In August of 1533, Story and his family returned to England after Edward VI died and Mary, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s Catholic daughter succeeded to the throne in spite of the attempt to supplant her by the Protestant Lady Jane Grey. Story went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Law but then took on important duties in the revived Catholic Church, serving as Chancellor for the dioceses of London and Oxford, and Dean of the Arches, the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his role as Chancellor for the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, he took part in heresy trials. He also served as proctor or representative for Queen Mary I at the trial of Thomas Cranmer in Oxford and joined efforts to control the publication of heretical books in several dioceses.

When Mary I and Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, died on November 17, 1558, Story, like other Catholics in England, waited to see what direction Elizabeth I would take in religion. Her first Parliament began to introduce bills leading to the establishment of the Church of England, and John Story found himself under attack for his opposition and for his work during Mary I’s reign. In May of 1560 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fleet, from which he escaped briefly, being recaptured and taken to Marshalsea Prison in April or May of 1562. He escaped from Marshalsea before he could be confronted with the taking of Elizabeth I’s Oath of Supremacy and fled again to Louvain, leaving everything he owned behind in England. His family joined him in exile again and the Duke of Alba offered him financial assistance and a position as a customs official. John Story renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth I and placed himself in the service of Philip II of Spain, ruling in the Spanish Netherlands. He remained there for seven years.

English agents used his position as customs agent to capture Story and return him to England. William Cecil, Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State set a trap by having spies pose as refugees from England seeking Spanish protection in the Netherlands. Story went aboard a ship in Antwerp to search it and the ship sailed to Yarmouth where he was placed under arrest. In London he was tortured and held there from August of 1570 until his trial on May 26, 1571 in Westminster Hall.

St. Edmund Campion attended this trial at which Story protested that he was a subject of the King of Spain and therefore not accountable to English treason laws. Accused of plotting the death of Elizabeth I, he refused to plead. The only evidence against him was his association with the Norton family who had been part of the Northern Rebellion of 1569, when Catholics rose up against Elizabeth’s religious policies. On April 27, 1570 Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in the Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, which also released her subjects from any allegiance to her. Certainly a former English subject, living in exile under the protection of one of England’s enemies did not stand a chance against the presumption of his guilt. The fact that he had opposed religious changes in Parliament during two reigns and participated in heresy trials in another compounded his danger. The verdict was a foregone conclusion and Story was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

St. Edmund Campion’s presence at this trial confirmed him in his reversion to Catholicsm as he was on his way to join the English exiles in Douai to study for the priesthood. Evidently he did not witness John Story’s execution on June 1, 1571 at Tyburn in London. Even though Story was 70 years old, the execution was carried out as brutally as possible—and he was posthumously mocked in pamphlets for having cried out in agony.

Philip II arranged for his widow and family to receive a pension—and his son John became a priest. The elder John Story was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. Blessed John Story offers a great example--his willingness to stand up for the Catholic faith in spite of repeated imprisonment and exile, culminating in his final capture, torture, trial and execution.

(C) Stephanie A. Mann, 2012