Our People

Homily to the World Youth Day Staff Mass

Feast of Sts John Fisher and Thomas More, Polding Centre

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
22/6/2007

Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work which you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me.” – Jn 17:1-5

On this day in 1535, the Lieutenant of the Tower of London woke Bishop John Fisher at 5 am for his 9 am execution. Like all good Bishop Fishers, the frail old Cardinal decided to go back to sleep. He wanted to save his strength for the occasion.

When the Lieutenant returned at 9am, Bishop Fisher was dressed in his best clothes for what he called his “wedding day”. He took a copy of the New Testament with him, where he found and read the words of Christ we have just heard. From the scaffold he announced: “Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ’s holy Catholic Church”. He asked for prayers for himself, his king and his country, and was then beheaded. Fisher’s naked body lay on the scaffold all day and was eventually buried by soldiers, without rites. His head was impaled on London Bridge, then later thrown into the Thames. If such a thing could be done to the greatest Churchman in England, no-one was safe: Within three weeks his friend, the former Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More, would meet the same fate on the same scaffold. He would famously declare: “I am the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”

More and Fisher: both were men of prayer and penance. Both were scholars, administrators and men of letters. Both were intellectually sophisticated yet practical men. More was a son of Oxford, Fisher of the Other place. Fisher was a member of the House of Lords, More of the Other place. Fisher was Chancellor of the University, More was Chancellor of the realm. They were close friends of each other, of Erasmus, of friendship itself and of new learning. Both were greatly supported by women: Fisher, by Lady Margaret Beaufort; More, by his wives and daughter. Both were opponents of Henry’s divorce and of him assuming the title “Supreme Head of the Church of England”. Both refused to repudiate papal authority and to swear support for the Act of Succession. Fisher was just about alone among England’s bishops and clergy in this, just as More was just about alone among the lawyers and the laity. Their arguments were remarkably similar: the King could no more legislate for the universal Church than the City of London for the whole realm. Henry’s actions were illegal and contrary to tradition and his own coronation oath. Both remained hopeful to the end, with More telling his judges that he hoped they might “hereafter in heaven all meet merrily together, to our everlasting salvation.”

So much in common, yet the two demonstrated complementarity also. They had rather different temperaments: More was the more brilliant, witty and affectionate, and so he has all the biographies and plays written about him. Yet Fisher’s integrity, courage and devotion to duty deserve to be better known. They had different rôles, of course. Although Fisher was thoroughly concerned about the ‘world’, running universities and counselling kings, he was principally devoted to the sacred ministry, a celibate devoted to his flock as a scholar, preacher and pastor. He was also outstanding in evangelical poverty, prayer and orthodoxy. For some strange reason, with such credentials, he did not become a Dominican, although his sister did, and it was for her that he wrote much of his spiritual writing, including the books he wrote whilst awaiting his execution in the Tower.

More, on the other hand, was a layman. Although he toyed with a religious vocation when he was young and remained a loyal son of the Church, deeply interested in theology and ecclesisastical issues, he married and pursued a secular career. His primary mission was family, law and politics, directing the temporal order to the divine. So as Fisher built up and sustained the Church from within, More helped to extend its boundaries out into the world of everyday work, politics and society, seeking to remedy unjust institutions and to impregnate culture and human works with moral value.

Both men refused to compartmentalise faith and action, Sunday and weekday, private and public, as some have claimed we should. Fisher would, I am sure, have been proud of his brother Cardinal these days past for standing up for Catholic teaching and the culture of life. More would, I suspect, have been less impressed by some of his brother parliamentarians here in New South Wales, if unsurprised. In these two, at least, there was no compartmentalising: both lived as whole persons, men of integrity. Both were Christians in the world, but not of it, each in his own place, directing all to God.
 
Among our great hopes for World Youth Day is a demonstration to the world that the terrible days of Christian hostility are over. We will see a tremendous co-operation between Christians and this will be a beacon of hope for that day when we Christians will all be reunited, not just merrily in heaven as More prayed, but even here on earth. Another of our great hopes for World Youth Day is to cultivate many more young men and women, outstanding in integrity and principle, willing to live and to die as witnesses to all that is true and good and beautiful, as witnesses to Christ, each discerning and then embracing and fulfilling his or her particular vocation.

So in John Fisher and Thomas More we see the common dignity and wonderful diversity of the Church, whereby the children of God, each of us, wherever God calls us to be, are “accomplishing the work God has given [us] to do”. In Fisher and More we see the complementarity of clergy and laity, each of us building up the kingdom of God on earth and working out with God our salvation and that of others. May your work for World Youth Day yield many more such saints!