Preview: Saint Thomas More: "Most Enemies" as Best Friends

On Monday, March 25--which would usually be the Solemnity of the the Annunciation of Our Lord--but this year is the Monday of Holy Week (the Annunciation will be celebrated on April 9, the Monday after the great Octave of Easter), we'll close out our Lenten series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. 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.

Please recall that this Lenten series has been based upon two entries from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day of the Year. Father Bowden titles the two entries, on pages 63 and 64, "In the Shadow of Death" (1) and (2) with the final verse from the Benedictus, "To enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death" and "To direct our feet into the way of peace" divided between them. (Luke 1:79)

We have come to the last grace St. Thomas More asked of Our Lord, and his summation of the value of the graces he has requested.

Image credit: (Public Domain) Children of Jacob sell their brother Joseph, by Konstantin Flavitsky, 1855.

In his last petition, St. Thomas More prays not just to forgive his enemies, but to be grateful to them! More uses the example of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, and how his brothers' betrayal of him worked to not only his good but the whole family's good--and even to the eventual Exodus and foundation of the Kingdom of Israel!

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

At the beginning of Holy Week, as we will hear at Masses throughout the week and at the service on Good Friday how Judas betrayed Jesus, Saint Peter denied Him, and all the other Apostles, save Saint John, abandoned Him, it seems appropriate to meditate on More's choice of Joseph, this Old Testament type (foreshadowing) of Jesus in More's use of him as an example. Like the "happy fault" of Adam highlighted in the Easter Vigil Exsultet, this betrayal worked to the good. 

Because Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other sons, they were jealous of him and wanted to kill him. His brother Reuben tried to save him, but they sold him into slavery (for either twenty pieces of silver or thirty pieces of gold, depending on the version) and then returned to tell Jacob he had been attacked and killed, showing him Joseph's bloody coat.

Image Credit: (Public Domain) Joseph's bloody coat brought to Jacob by Diego Velasquez, 1630. (Note that the dog doesn't trust the brothers at all: it can smell the goat's blood on the coat!)

Joseph suffered at first in Egypt, but eventually became the Pharaoh's great advisor, interpreting a dream and preparing for a long famine by storing grain. So when Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph and Jacob were finally reunited and the whole family moved to Egypt, thus setting up the Exodus and the great Covenant with Israel.

More wants to think of all that has happened to him as providential and for his ultimate good, as it had been for Joseph and Jacob and the Kingdom of Israel.

This is the source of his ability, during his imprisonment, the interrogations, the trial, the guilty verdict and sentencing to the death of a traitor, and the day of his execution, to wish that he and his former colleagues, his friends and family, would all meet "merrily in Heaven" some day.

Image Credit: (Public Domain) John Rogers Herbert (1810-1890) - Sir Thomas More and his Daughter (watching the protomartyrs of the English Reformation being taken to Tyburn for execution as traitors).

Father Bowden does not include this final line in the second entry:

These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and layed together all upon one heap.

What are"these minds" (these thoughts and petitions)? St. Thomas More says that "these minds" outweigh "all the treasure" of all the richest royal men, "Christian and heathen" if it could be all brought "together all upon one heap"!

Think of Tolkien's illustration of Smaug's treasure in The Hobbit!

Those "minds" are the graces More asked God to give him in his last months on earth; all the thoughts and prayers and actions God would help him think and pray and do and not do: the detachment from worldly things and the attachment to Christ and His passion; the repentance and penance he wished to experience to be ready for death and Heaven: to let Christ increase in his life as he decreased in the world and his own concern; to love God more and himself less. That seems to sum up all those petitions in one heap:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.
To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
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.
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Best wishes for a happy and prayerful Holy Week and Easter Sunday!

Preview: St. Thomas More on "Vain Confabulations" and "Foolish Mirth"

On Monday, March 18, we'll discuss the penultimate section of St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. 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.

This may be the most difficult section of this meditation to think about because More seems willing to cast off many of the characteristics that made him More: his love of humor, of silly (sometimes rather off-color) jokes, of mirth, friendship, and gladness . . .  (less of More?)

Do we have to do that too?

And this section contains one of the most perplexing lines in the prayer: "To buy the time again that I before have lost" . . . 

How do we make up for lost or wasted time? 

In this fifth week of Lent, as we've entered Passiontide and in some parishes the statues and crucifixes are veiled, can we make up for our Lenten failures now?

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

The word "confabulations" has the word fable in its root: Merriam Webster defines it thus:

Confabulate is a fabulous word for making fantastic fabrications. Given the similarities in spelling and sound, you might guess that confabulate and fabulous come from the same root, and they do—the Latin fābula, which refers to a conversation or a story. Another fābula descendant that continues to tell tales in English is fable. All three words have long histories in English: fable first appears in writing in the 14th century, and fabulous follows in the 15th.

This line about "vain confabulations" recalls his earlier mention of "worldly fantasies", but here he's referring to a method of telling a story. He has to reject those methods if they are in vain, just for the exercise of showing what he can do. He wants to reject "light foolish mirth and gladness" in contrast to the joy and gladness mentioned in last week's meditation ("Gladly to bear my purgatory here; To be joyful of tribulations").

Nevertheless, More used the structure of fables in other Tower Works to make his points through stories. He wrote The Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation while in the Tower, imagining an old sick uncle counselling his frightened nephew on how to deal with the consequences of a Turkish invasion. He was certainly providing spiritual counsel to those afraid of suffering and death, with Christian philosophy and Catholic piety. And he exchanged letters with his daughters Margaret and Alice as his Dialogue on Conscience, using a fable of Aesop and another of the lion and the wolf, and the famous story about "Company" on the Jury to explain what he meant when he said he had to obey his formed and considered conscience. These were among  his usual methods of engaging in controversy, using stories to tell a lesson. He established fictional situations--like his Utopia--to showcase a discussion or dialogue about real issues with true consequences.

As readers of this blog know, he also wrote the Sadness of Christ and the Treatise on the Passion while in the Tower, as he desired to "have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me". In those works he explored the texts of the Gospels for their moral and spiritual implications for himself and other Christians.

Saint Thomas More's discernment of how to balance these issues of detachment and preparation for death and the life to come is what makes this "Godly Meditation" so deeply personal to him at that time and yet filled with inspiration for us. Even as he faced his past sins and his future judgment, he reminded himself and us that he should be intent upon his present, to make use of the time he had in reparation and preparation. That's what we do every Lent: practice acts of detachment through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; reflect on, confess, and repent of our sins; prepare for the celebration of Easter--all as the model of being prepared for the life to come in the hope the Resurrection and Heaven.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

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! 

Preview: Thomas More on the World, God, and the Confession of Sins

Continuing our series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on Monday, March 4, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim of the Son Rise Morning Show and I will discuss this next arbitrarily chosen portion of More's prayer. 

As you know by now, 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.

More continues his concern with being rid of worldly concerns and delves more deeply into what it means to have his mind set "fast upon" God, including a good examination of conscience and confession of sins:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins passed.
For the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.

Later in this prayer, More refers to "vain confabulations", to avoid making up different versions of reality, imagining himself in different circumstances. He has to face what's happening to him now, face his dependence on God, and face the ways that he has failed to love God throughout his life.

He cannot imagine himself back home at Chelsea with his loving family and friends: the only way he can achieve that it by violating his conscience. He certainly doesn't want to think of himself at Court, trying to influence worldly events: that time has passed. He has already done all he could.

So he turns to God: thinking of Him; calling for His help; leaning on His comfort; working to love Him, mentally, prayerfully, spiritually.

As he strives to become more attached to God, More turns to an examination of conscience, reviewing the sins he committed in the past, repenting of them, and being ready to suffer for them in his current circumstances. 

Matt brought up conscience (referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church) during our discussion last week, and here More prays to know, to humble himself, to become meek, to bewail his sins, and suffer adversity to purge himself of the temporal punishment due to those sins, all by examining his conscience thoroughly.

In his preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics volume of Selected Writings of Thomas More, Joseph W. Koterski, SJ, highlights More's "practice of a careful and daily examination of conscience in which he had steeled himself since his youth", "reserving a time and place for the examination of conscience", even creating a separate oratory at his home in Chelsea for that meditation. 

So, applying this portion of More's "Godly Meditation" to our 2024 Lenten observance, it points us to the Sacrament of Confession. Since Lent is the season of repentance and conversion, the Church highlights the Sacrament of Confession. My local parish has added opportunities for Reconciliation/Penance/Confession throughout the Lent and our pastor just highlighted the need for Confession, not just once a year, but more often, for very practical reasons: 

While the requirement is once a year, the Church encourages people to go to Confession once a month, because she knows how difficult it is to remember things that happened almost a year ago. Along with that, the less often we go to Confession we lose our sense of sin and then we do not clearly see sins that we might see if we regularly examine our conscience and bring ours sins to the sacrament of mercy. (Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church March 3 Parish Bulletin.)

And although More may have been faithful in his examinations of conscience and Sacramental Confessions, he admits that he still needs to make up for the consequences of those sins, so he is willing to endure suffering to expiate them. As another English saint, John Henry Newman, wrote in a Lenten sermon when he was an Anglican:

Let us be wise enough to have our agony in this world, not in the next. If we humble ourselves now, God will pardon us then. We cannot escape punishment, here or hereafter; we must take our choice, whether to suffer and mourn a little now, or much then. (PPS "Lent, the Season of Repentance.")

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Preview: St. Thomas More on God's Grace and the "World"

On Monday, February 26, we'll continue our series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

We're going to begin with the prayer itself after our general introduction last week to More's circumstances and plan for his life and death in the Tower of London. Now we'll begin to see how applicable his plan is to our Lenten practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer. Here are the lines for this conversation:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.

Give my thy Grace, good Lord; More begins in the right place, asking God's grace to accomplish his plan of life. I think that's where we should begin too. "Oh God, come to my assistance. Make haste to help me." We can't do this on our own, saving ourselves, manifesting our own willpower to achieve these ends. Whatever we set out to do or not to do, we have to discern that it's what is best for us to do, with God's grace, and then ask for His grace to help us persevere with our Lenten discipline so it transforms us by the end of the season, prepared for the Holy Triduum and Easter Sunday!

His first petitions introduce the negative and positive aspects of his preparation, and ours: 

To set the world at naught.

To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.

First to treat the world as nothing of importance; to become detached from the world. How do we do this?

Like Thomas More, husband, father, and friend, diplomat and author, former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Chancellor, if we're active laity, we have to be involved in the world in many ways, in our families, workplaces, our cities, states, and country. We can't abandon it.

I think he offers two ways to face this challenge: 

First, setting our minds fast upon the Lord, through prayer, spiritual reading, silence, and all the different ways Catholic tradition has given us. That's part of any Christian life, intensified during Lent.

Second, to avoid the "blast of men's mouths", the cacophony of talk and endless speculative debate. Perhaps not reading or listening to all the "talking heads" on television and radio discussing politics or sports to no consequence? When I heard some sports talk still discussing the Super Bowl two weeks after the event, debating who lost the game for the 49ers, I thought, how useless! They've got to fill the hours, but I don't have to listen or watch.

In the following lines, perhaps the first part ("To be content to be solitary,/Not to long for worldly company.") applies most directly to More's situation in the Tower of London, but the last part can apply to us as we try to "Little and little utterly to cast off the world/And rid [our minds] of all the business thereof", especially when it's not really our business . . .

I'm sure Matt or Anna will have other responses and suggestions . . .

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Preview: St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation": A Guide for Lent

For February 19 and 20 in his Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day of the Year (and he does include an entry for February 29 during a Leap Year!), Father Henry Sebastian Bowden chose one of the prayers Saint Thomas More wrote in the Tower of London. Some sources date this prayer to sometime in 1534 (More was imprisoned on April 17, 1534; he was tried on July 1, 1535 and executed on July 6), as he began his life in prison.

Since Saint Thomas More spent the last months of his life, as he said, meditating on the Passion of Christ and preparing himself for death, I thought it could make a good guide for the Lenten Season.

Therefore, on Monday, February 19, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will start our discussion of this great prayer on the Son Rise Morning Show, continuing to reflect on its riches each Monday of Lent 2024. 

I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later. 

Father Bowden titles the two entries, on pages 63 and 64, "In the Shadow of Death" (1) and (2) with the final verse from the Benedictus, "To enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death" and "To direct our feet into the way of peace" divided between them. (Luke 1:79)

For our first episode, we'll just review the issues More is dealing with in this prayer: all that he's lost and all that he hopes to gain. The entire text is a litany of petitions. As he wrote this in the margins of his breviary Thomas More was preparing himself for death, either in prison or by execution. He had already lost his freedom, his influence, his power, his friends, and many of the comforts of his family and he was praying to be reconciled to those losses. I don't think this was easy for Saint Thomas More: Although the petitions seem measured and calm, More was facing a great struggle.

Here is the text as Father Bowden presents it:

"In the Shadow of Death" (1)

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.

Note: you may see these first two lines written at the top and bottom of a page from More's breviary here.

To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
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.

"In the Shadow of Death" (2)

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.
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all 

To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

Father Bowden does not include this final line in these two entries:

[These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and layed together all upon one heap.]

Saint Thomas More starts out preparing to lose much that he held dear; then he prays for what he needs not just to replace but to surpass those things; then he meditates on preparing for death and repenting of past sins--then he mentions again all the things he needs to give up and what he'll gain thereby. As Father Bowden concludes the prayer, More wants to be grateful, even, to those who've put him in the Tower of London, comparing his situation to the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. 

Finally, More compares worldly treasures to spiritual goods, with the latter far surpassing the former.

Each Monday of Lent, we'll discuss More's " A Godly Meditation" as a pattern for Lent, as it serves as a model of detachment, repentance, and faith in God. Some of the things More gave up may easy for some of us, or as hard or harder for some of us as they were for him, but what he stood to gain--"the comfort of God" and "the winning of Christ" are as precious to us as they were to him.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

St. Thomas More's Final Preparations for Death

As Samuel Johnson said in the eighteenth century, "Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." St. Thomas More did not have a fortnight to prepare for his execution--or rather he had had more than a year to prepare for his death while imprisoned in the Tower of London--after he was sentenced to being hanged, drawn, and quartered on July 1, 1535. Once back in his cell, Thomas More concentrated again on his death, writing a prayer that combined devotion, a general examination of conscience, and petitions for God's grace to live and die according to His will. It is a model of devotion, faith, and thoughtfulness, titled "A Devout Prayer". After beginning with the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo, More continued:

O Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three equal and coeternal Persons and one Almighty God, have mercy on me, vile, abject, abominable, sinful wretch, meekly knowledging before Thine High Majesty my long-continued sinful life, even from my very childhood hitherto.

In my childhood (in this point and that point). After my childhood (in this point and that point, and so forth by every age).

Now, good gracious Lord, as Thou givest me Thy grace to knowledge them, so give me Thy grace not only in word but in heart also, with very sorrowful contrition to repent them and utterly to forsake them. And forgive me those sins also in which, by mine own default, through evil affections and evil custom, my reason is with sensuality so blinded that I cannot discern them for sin. And illumine, good Lord, mine heart, and give me Thy grace to know them and to knowledge them, and forgive me my sins negligently forgotten, and bring them to my mind with grace to be purely confessed of them.

Glorious God, give me from henceforth Thy grace, with little respect unto the world, so to set and fix firmly mine heart upon Thee, that I may say with Thy blessed apostle St. Paul: "Mundus mihi crucifixus est et ego mundo. Mihi vivere Christus est et mori lucrum. Cupio dissolvi et esse cum Christo."[The world is crucified to me and I to the world. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I wish to be dissolved and be with Christ. (Gal. 6:14 and Phil 1:21-23)]

Give me Thy grace to amend my life and to have an eye to mine end without grudge of death, which to them that die in Thee, good Lord, in the gate of a wealthy life.

Almighty God, Doce me facere voluntatem Tuam. Fac me currere in odore unguentorum tuorum. Apprehende manum meam dexteram et deduc me in via recta propter inimicos meos. Trahe me post te. In chamo et freno maxillas meas constringe, quum non approximo ad te. [Teach me to do your will. Make me run in the scent of your unguents. Take my right hand, and lead me in the right path because of my enemies. Draw me after you. With a muzzle and bridle restrain my jaws when I do not draw near to you. (Psalm 31:9)]

O glorious God, all sinful fear, all sinful sorrow and pensiveness, all sinful hope, all sinful mirth and gladness take from me. And on the other side, concerning such fear, such sorrow, such heaviness, such comfort, consolation, and gladness as shall be profitable for my soul: Fac mecum secundum magnam bonitatem tuam Domine. [Deal with me according to your great goodness, O Lord. (Psalm 118:124)]

Good Lord, give me the grace, in all my fear and agony, to have recourse to that great fear and wonderful agony that Thou, my sweet Saviour, hadst at the Mount of Olivet before Thy most bitter passion, and in the meditation thereof to conceive ghostly comfort and consolation profitable for my soul.

Almighty God, take from me all vain-glorious minds, all appetites of mine own praise, all envy, covetise, gluttony, sloth, and lechery, all wrathful affections, all appetite of revenging, all desire or delight of other folk's harm, all pleasure in provoking any person to wrath and anger, all delight of exprobation or insultation against any person in their affliction and calamity.

And give me, good Lord, an humble, lowly, quiet, peaceable, patient, charitable, kind, tender, and pitiful mind with all my works, and all my words, and all my thoughts, to have a taste of Thy holy, blessed Spirit.

Give me, good Lord, a full faith, a firm hope, and a fervent charity, a love to the good Lord incomparable above the love to myself; and that I love nothing to Thy displeasure, but everything in an order to Thee.

Give me, good Lord, a longing to be with Thee, not for the avoiding of the calamities of this wretched world, nor so much for the avoiding of the pains of purgatory, nor of the pains of hell neither, nor so much for the attaining of the joys of heaven in respect of mine own commodity, as even, for a very love to Thee.

And bear me, good Lord, Thy love and favour, which thing my love to Thee-ward, were it never so great, could not, but of Thy great goodness deserve.

And pardon me, good Lord, that I am so bold to ask so high petitions, being so vile a sinful wretch, and so unworthy to attain the lowest. But yet, good Lord, such they be as I am bounden to wish, and should be nearer the effectual desire of them if my manifold sins were not the let. From which, O glorious Trinity, vouchsafe, of Thy goodness to wash me with that blessed blood that issued out of Thy tender body, O sweet Saviour Christ, in the divers torments of Thy most bitter passion.

Take from me, good Lord, this lukewarm fashion, or rather key-cold manner of meditation, and this dulness in praying unto Thee. And give me warmth, delight, and quickness in thinking upon Thee. And give me Thy grace to long for Thine holy sacraments, and specially to rejoice in the presence of Thy very blessed body, sweet Saviour Christ, in the holy sacrament of the altar, and duly to thank Thee for Thy gracious visitation therewith, and at that high memorial with tender compassion to remember and consider Thy most bitter passion.

Make us all, good Lord, virtually participant of that holy sacrament this day, and every day. Make us all lively members, sweet Saviour Christ, of Thine holy mystical body, Thy Catholic Church.

Dignare, Domine, die isto sine peccato nos custodire. [Deign, O Lord, on that day to preserve us without sin.]

Miserere nostri, Domine, miserere nostri. [Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us.]
Fiat misericordia tua, Domine, super nos, quemadmodum speravimus in te. [Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we have hoped in you. (Psalm 32:22)]
In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in æternum. [In you, O Lord, I have hoped, let me not be confounded in eternity. (Psalm 30 2)]
R. Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei genitrix. [Pray for us, holy Mother of God]
V. Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi. [That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.]

Then he prayed for his friends and enemies:

Pro amicis.

Almighty God, have mercy on N. and N. (with special meditation and consideration of every friend, as godly affections and occasion requireth).

Pro inimicis.

Almighty God, have mercy on N. and N., and on all that bear me evil will, and would me harm, and their faults and mine together by such easy, tender, merciful means as Thine infinite wisdom best can devise, vouchsafe to amend and redress and make us saved souls in heaven together, where we may ever live and love together with Thee and Thy blessed saints, O glorious Trinity, for the bitter passion of our sweet Saviour Christ. Amen.

God, give me patience in tribulation and grace in everything, to conform my will to Thine, that I may truly say: "Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra". [Thy will be done on earth and it is in heaven. (Pater Noster)]

The things, good Lord, that I pray for, give me Thy grace to labour for. Amen.

Yale's university library has Thomas More's prayer book in its Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library:

It is not known how the prayer book survived after More was executed. It first surfaced in an exhibition in 1929 and was purchased by the Beinecke Library in 1965. It actually comprises two printed books: a book of Hours and a Psalter. Printed in 1522 and 1525 in Paris for the English market, the books retain their original simple black binding.

The annotations on the book of Hours were gathered by More’s nephew, William Rastell, and published in his 1557 edition of the English works of Thomas More. (Starting in 1958, Yale’s St. Thomas More Project, an international scholarly collaboration, edited and published 16 volumes of More’s writings; they are all still in print.) These verses show More wrestling with, and reconciling himself to, a painful death and the possible ruin of his family for his religious convictions. They are his best-known spiritual writings.

The Catholic Truth Society publishes a booklet of his prayers and other materials, including his final devotions upon conviction and sentencing. It also contains his great Godly Meditation, composed in 1534 after he was imprisoned in the Tower.

St. Thomas More, pray for us!