St. Thomas More...It's Personal

St. Thomas More always held a certain amount of fascination for me. Having been raised as a Protestant, that may seem ironic. Yet, there was something not so much about his life, but in his martyr's death that intrigued me. He had been one of the brilliant minds of his time. His intellect and wit won him the deep regard of his peers. As Lord Chancellor of England, he held one of the highest positions imaginable. And he gave everything up rather than compromise his Catholic faith.

Decades ago, I'd been impressed when I'd read about St. Thomas More's life and, also, his classic work, Utopia. When my husband and I first went to London, one of the places we found ourselves on our arrival night was at the steps of Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament, where St. Thomas More had been convicted of treason and sentenced to execution. Later that evening, we unknowingly had wandered to the site of his former home in Chelsea, where an imposing statute of him stands. This seemed to happen on subsequent trips, too. It became a pattern of odd little St. Thomas More coincidences.

Years later, my husband and I found ourselves, unexpectedly and to the confusion of our families, on a different kind of journey...a conversion to Catholicism. And, along the way, St. Thomas More served as a kind of beacon on that long road.

Life is rarely as one expects it to be and I'd suffered several miscarriages. In addition to our regular prayers, we decided to do a very Catholic thing: a novena. A novena is simply a discipline (novena meaning nine) in which you say a specific prayer for either nine days, once a week for nine weeks, or once a week for nine months. And, for the many non-Catholics reading this, I'd like to differentiate that Catholics don't pray to saints, we ask for the prayers of those in heaven. Anyway, it seemed the obvious choice was to ask St. Thomas More for his prayers on behalf of our hopes for a family.

And I found myself pregnant again. The baby's due date was the exact date of St. Thomas More's birth. When the doctor scheduled an ultrasound, I half-dreaded the appointment. In the past, this was when we'd found out there was no longer any movement, the heartbeat had stopped. Then, I noticed the date for the ultrasound was St. Thomas More's feast day. It seemed we were being reminded each step of the way that we had a friend in high places.

When our son was born, we knew we had no choice but to name him Thomas. Really, how could we not? And, I hope that like his patron saint, he'll grow up to be just, kind, wise, and faithful...a man always true to himself.