September 30, 2009

St. Thomas More: inspiration in the face of adversity

By L. Michael Brooks Jr., Esq.

Every June 22, the members and friends of the St. Thomas More Society come together for a Mass to honor the patron of lawyers and namesake of the organization on the saint’s feast day.

It’s an easy day for me to remember, as it also happens to be my birthday.  But June 22 is also the anniversary of the day in 2007 that a former Denver district court judge and Denver city attorney shot himself under a bridge in a local park after a highly publicized investigation about a missing state-owned laptop.

Lately it seems we are bombarded with similar stories of successful, seemingly happy people who fall from the height of promising careers and frequently cause devastation to their families.  That the subjects of many of these stories happen to be lawyers or judges may be a sad commentary on the legal profession and a reflection on the broader public’s interest in salacious stories involving lawyers.  After all, lawyers and judges are part of the class that makes and enforces the rules.  When they are alleged to break the rules or make some serious mistake, it rarely goes unnoticed. 

For some of us, our mistakes may be professional ones that may even be recorded in the books of judicial decisions, publicly available but not widely read.  For others, personal or professional failings may become very public news.  Public exposure of our sins and failings can frequently give rise to overwhelming despair. 

For those of us, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, who face this despair that comes from a failure of a personal or professional nature, the life and inspiring words of St. Thomas More offer an example of hope that we can, in his words, “be merry in God,” even in the face of great adversity.  More’s decision to stand up to King Henry VIII and to support papal authority was certainly no mistake or folly.  But the effect of that decision on More’s life and that of his family was no less severe than if he had committed the most serious transgression.  Stripped of his titles and authority, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and finally executed, More suffered the same punishment as if he had been guilty of horrible crimes. 

Through it all, More took solace not just in the conviction that he was right, but also in the fact that the adversity he was suffering was, itself, a gift from God.  More knew that the gift of adversity is rarely one that is asked for, and that God’s reason for bestowing such a gift is frequently a mystery to us.  Yet he prayed in thanksgiving, saying, “Perhaps we have more cause to thank God for our loss than for our gain, for his wisdom can see better what is good for us than we ourselves can see.”  When his family’s barn went up in flames, consuming an abundant harvest of grain stored there, More urged his family to “thank (God) heartily for adversity as well as for prosperity”  (“Be Merry In God,” Charis, 1999).   

More’s words of comfort to his family are yet another example of the fact that our Catholic faith runs against the prevailing currents of our culture.  Suffering is seen as something that is always to be avoided; pain must be relieved.  But for lasting relief, we have to understand the reasons for our adversity and what lessons God might be trying to teach us through suffering, particularly when, as is so often the case, our suffering is at least partially of our own doing. 

As we celebrate the annual Red Mass this Oct. 11, I join with the members of the St. Thomas More Society in praying through the intercession of St. Thomas More for all of us who have had some failing, private or public, personal or professional, that is causing great adversity, that we will come to understand God’s grace in allowing adversity to befall us and that we will use the events of adversity in our lives as invitations to strengthen our faith in God and to “be merry” in him.   
 
L. Michael Brooks Jr., Esq., of Wells, Anderson & Race LLC, is president of the St. Thomas More Society of Colorado.

St. Thomas More Society of Colorado

Online: www.lawyers4allseasons.org
Phone: 303-830-1212