In the Church’s traditional calendar St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More have their feasts on 9 July. More was martyred on 6 July and Fisher on 22 June. In the Novus Ordo calendar they are celebrated today, together.
HOWEVER: According to Cum Sanctissima feasts established after 1962 can be observed in the Vetus Ordo so long as some other feast doesn’t “outweigh” it. Hence, today we can say the Mass in honor of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher. For TEXTS see below!
Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared St. Thomas more the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.
More makes you think about our catholic politicians today. Fisher about our bishops.
Plus ça change…
There is a book about them: John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads by Robert J. Conrad, Jr and published by TAN, which is serious stepping up its game.
Two saints for our times if ever there was need, one for comportment in the secular sphere and the other in the Church.
Let us invoke the intercession of St. Thomas and of St. John for our public figures, secular and spiritual.
Animi caussa…
From the 2005 Martyrologium Romanum.
Sanctorum Ioannis Fisher, episcopi, et Thomae More, martyrum, qui, cum Henrico regi Octavo in controversia de eius matrimonio repudiando et de Romani Pontificis primatu restitissent, in Turrem Londinii in Anglia trusi sunt. Ioannes Fisher, episcopus Roffensis, vir eruditione et dignitate vitae clarissimus, hac die iussu ipsius regis ante carcerem decollatus est; Thomas More vero paterfamilias vita integerrimus et praeses coetus moderatorum nationis, propter fidelitatem erga Ecclesiam catholicam servatam sexta die iulii cum venerabili antistite martyrio coniunctus est.
Anyone care to take a shot?
NOTA BENE FATHERS!
Mass texts in the Extraordinary Form for these two saints on 9 July are not easy to find. HERE and HERE
Huge thanks for the texts from my good friend, His Hermeneuticalness, Fr. Tim Finigan.
Tonight… this great classic?
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When I checked NLM this morning, Gregory Di Pippo said that today is also supposed to be the Vigil of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, since it cannot take place on Sunday tomorrow.
That would be, I believe, if we were living in 1906 and thereafter until 1954. However, today is the 22nd. Tomorrow, the 23rd is a Sunday and we observe the 5th Sunday after Pentecost. Monday is the Feast of St. John. Today, in 1962, if it were not for Cum Sanctissima, we would have St. Paulinus.
Saints John Fisher, bishop, and Thomas More, martyrs, who, when opposing King Henry XVIII’s marital separation and the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, where thrown in the Tower of London in England. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man of renown learning and distinction, was beheaded on this day by the same king’s order; Thomas More, a husband of known integrity of life and Lord High Chancellor of England, on account of the need to keep one’s fidelity to the Catholic Church became united with the venerable bishop in martyrdom on the sixth day of July.
Just reading that Conrad book now. It is good and different. Also discovered a new book coming out in September on the life Margaret More Roper. If it wasn’t for her heroic work recovering the writings and artifacts of her father (and keeping them secret and safe), we would have had nothing today.
HERE
The July 9 Mass propers for SS John Fisher and Thomas More are in the section on Local feasts in my copy of the 1945 edition of the Saint Andrew Daily Missal (p. 1846) published in 1999 by St Bonaventure Publications.
Di Pipio’s article presents a much better response to Iconophilios’s comment, which points out that vigils in their traditional sense were eliminated in 1969 something I am sure Iconophilios understands.
I think for your readers who don’t read NLM it is worthwhile to present the following part of the very capable Gregory Di Pipio explanation of the liturgical issues:
“ Because they (vigils) are penitential days, they are not celebrated on a Sunday, but anticipated to the previous Saturday, which is the case this year for the vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. Before 1908, the feast of St Paulinus of Nola was ranked as a simple feast, and the vigil would have taken precedence over it, but in that year, St Pius X raised it to the rank of a double. The vigil is therefore observed in the Divine Office with the ninth lesson at Matins, and a commemoration at Lauds. Private Masses may be said of either the vigil or the feast, with the commemoration of the other; in major churches, the Mass of the feast is said after Terce, and that of the vigil after None.”