“I do not care very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of me.”

Thomas was born in London in 1478 of a prominent family whose father was a lawyer and judge. His father was left a widower although he was married 4 times and 3 of his siblings died within a year of birth which was common in England at that time.

He entered Oxford at the age of 14 and left after another 2 years to train in London as a lawyer. Within beginning his practice, he contemplated another path while living next to a Carthusian monastery. He often joined their spiritual exercises.

He married and had 4 children before her death when he was 33. He then quickly re-married to a wealthy widow within a month which was received very poorly but they believed he did it to help his children whom he often wrote to while at work. He highly encouraged their education and academic accomplishments.

He was elected to parliament and honed his skills as a theologian and writer. His most famous work is “Utopia” and it is considered one of the greatest works of the late Renaissance.

King Henry VIII took a liking to Thomas and gave him increasingly responsibility, eventually knighting him in 1521. The King’s trust grew and he gave him authority over Northern England as Lord Chancellor. Thomas worked tirelessly to defend the Catholic faith and fight heresy but when the King sought an annulment, Thomas refused to sign a letter to the Pope.

Thomas could no longer work for the King who he thought had lost his way with the Lord and Henry VIII viewed him as disloyal. Thomas then also refused to acknowledge the King as head of the Church and his annulment from his next wife which led to his arrest and imprisonment. He had an unfair trial and was sentenced to decapitation instead of torture as an act of mercy.

As he ascended the beheading scaffold on July 6, 1535, he joked with his executioners, unafraid of death with a final statement of “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”

It was revealed in life that he wore an itchy hair shirt as a sign of atonement and repentance. He was a man of deep piety, asceticism, self-discipline, penitence and tremendous integrity.

“Occupy your minds with Good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones. Unoccupied, they cannot be.”

He is the patron saint of adopted children, lawyers, civil servants, court clerks, politicians, difficult marriages, step-parents, widowers, and the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia and Pensacola-Tallahassee, Florida.

His feast day is June 22.

For God’s Glory.