Several of you may have seen the delightful little prayer that circulates on the Internet as being by Thomas More, and that begins "Lord, give me a good digestion, and something to digest". Alas, it is not, and cannot be, by More; its language, its humour and its sentiments are thoroughly twentieth century. Mind you, as Fr Germain Marc'hadour has pointed out, More would probably have enjoyed seeing a prayer of his own so parodied.
The one prayer we know is by More was written in his own hand in a book in the Tower of London, some time before his execution. It is both wry and moving, and I reproduce it here from the website of the Amici Thomae Mori, where there are also discussions of the apocryphal digestion prayer. First, rather than the usual Holbein portrait, I thought I'd reproduce the Holbein sketch for a More family portrait, the painted version of which is lost. It does show More with his delightful entourage, where wit and humour were close friends with prayer and devotion. In the prayer itself I have modernised the spelling, something I don't often do, but in this case it will make it easier to follow and digest.
1 Give me thy
grace, good Lord
To set the world at naught
2 To set my
mind fast upon thee
And not to hang upon the blast
of men’s mouths
3 To be
content to be solitary
Not to long for worldly company
4 Little by
little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business
thereof
5 Not to long
to hear of any worldly things
But that the hearing of worldly
fantasies may
be to me displeasant
6 Gladly to be
thinking of god
Piteously to call for his help
7 To lean unto
the comfort of god
Busily to labour to love him
8 To know mine
own vility [vileness] & wretchedness
To humble & meeken myself under
the
mighty hand of God
9 To bewail my
sins past
For the purging of them patiently
to
suffer adversity
10 Gladly to
bear my purgatory here
To be joyful of tribulations
11 To walk the
narrow way that leadeth to life
To bear the cross with Christ
12 To have the
last thing in remembrance
To have ever afore mine eye my
death that is
ever at hand
13 To make death
no stranger to me
To foresee & consider the
everlasting fire
of hell
14 To pray for
pardon before the Judge come
To have continually in mind the
passion that
Christ suffered for me
15 For his
benefits incessantly to give him thanks
To buy the time again that I before
have lost
16 To abstain
from vain confabulations
To eschew light foolish mirth &
gladness
17 Recreations
not necessary to cut off
Of worldly substance, friends,
liberty, life and
all, to set the loss at right
nought for the winning of Christ
18 To think my
most enemies my best friends
for the brethren of Joseph could
never have done
him so much good with their love
& favour as
they did him with their malice
& hatred
19 These minds
are more to be desired of
every man than all the treasure of
all the princes & kings Christian
& heathen,
were it gathered & laid
together
all upon one heap
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