Starting this evening, Thursday, March 28th, the Thomas More College community will begin a three-day silent retreat. All the students, faculty, and staff will be participating in this Lenten recollection.
The days will include reflections on the life of Thomas More—including his personal correspondence—whose patient silence during such calamitous times for the Church and England, are a much-desired example for us today.
More’s letters, which he wrote while imprisoned in the Tower, do not reveal a man who is a political prisoner wishing to eviscerate his enemies. Neither do they reveal a man of moral superiority who lambastes the moral defects and cowardliness of his contemporaries.
He writes as a man of Faith. Praying for the strength to discern God’s will, using all his human abilities to preserve his life, while also praying for the strength to lay it down if that is what God asks of him. To his enemies he is no enemy, and to his angered king, he is his most loyal subject.
More’s quiet, patient, prayerful, and silent way of dealing with the moral, theological, and political tumult of his time, is an example worthy to be remembered.
In enjoining ourselves in these few days of silence, we ask for his intercession as we face the calamities of our own times. We ask that all of you pray for us, as we will be praying for you, and when possible, join us in our retreat.
We would recommend reading these two letters from Thomas More to his daughter Margaret: First Letter; Second Letter as provided by The Center for Thomas More Studies.
