84. St. Thomas More: The Door That Cannot Shut Out Christ

“I was in prison, and you came to me.” — Matthew 25:36

In the third book of St. Thomas More's Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, Vincent fears captivity in a strange land and then asks about imprisonment. Anthony answers from within a work More wrote while he himself was confined in the Tower of London. Yet the old uncle and his nephew are literary speakers in an imagined Hungary. We should not erase either side of that distinction. More was a real prisoner; the dialogue lets him examine captivity through a scene he constructed.^1

Vincent gives the objection a human voice. Even if a prisoner is treated gently, he says, it grieves him to be kept within boundaries fixed by another man. And an actual jail may bring separation, cold, restraint, hard treatment, and fear of what comes next. Anthony does not answer that the pain is imaginary. He expressly grants that imprisonment can bring grievous suffering. He asks Vincent to consider first what the loss of movement is, and then to face the other hardships honestly.^2

That order is itself a kindness. A frightened soul often sees every possible sorrow arriving at once. More separates what is present from what is feared, not because a future hardship cannot happen, but because it has not yet happened. Grace is sought for the duty of this hour. We need not endure every imagined tomorrow before evening prayer today.

Anthony argues that earthly liberty was never without limits. A person outside a cell cannot go everywhere, do everything, or escape death. Vincent listens, but tells his uncle frankly that the comparison does not yet satisfy him. The narrow prison still seems different from life outside it.^2

Anthony welcomes that answer. He would rather hear an honest objection than receive words of agreement from an unpersuaded heart. Here More gives teachers and parents a lesson as valuable as the argument itself. Comfort cannot be forced by making a sufferer repeat a pious conclusion. Ask what still hurts. Let the person tell the truth. Then reason and pray together.

More's comparison is not a claim that an unjustly confined person has suffered no special wrong, or that every sorrow in exile equals a prisoner's lot. A locked cell is narrower than a household. A banished family is deprived in ways its neighbors may not be. The point is that no worldly breadth of movement is the final freedom for which man was made. Every earthly liberty is temporary, and every life must answer to God. The prince walking his grounds cannot evade death; a faithful prisoner can still receive the grace by which death is conquered.^2

Anthony places beside captivity another kind of servitude: the bondage of sin. He recalls Our Lord's teaching that the one who commits sin is the servant of sin. A person may pass through every open gate and yet be governed by anger, lust, avarice, or fear. Conversely, the prisoner cannot make himself free by pretending his chains do not hurt, but he need not surrender his will to sin because another has constrained his body.^3

This must not become an excuse for rulers to imprison, abuse, or exploit. Created authority is accountable to God's law. More's spiritual comparison neither excuses an unjust jailer nor cancels a sufferer's right to seek lawful relief. It asks a different question: What in me can still be given to Christ when much that I once controlled has been taken away?

The answer begins with the will. It can still refuse a lie. It can repent. It can pray for an enemy without calling the enemy's deeds good. It can ask for the sacraments where they can truly be had and remain faithful when they are withheld. These are not small powers. They belong to the freedom Christ restores, a freedom no keeper can manufacture or finally confiscate.

More will not let a reader contemplate prison only from the safety of an armchair. In the dialogue, Vincent admits that he sends alms to prisoners but dislikes visiting them. Anthony tells him plainly that he should amend this. The personal visit can do great good to the visitor's soul.^2

Our Lord makes the matter still more urgent: “I was in prison, and you came to me.” The prisoner is not a devotional illustration. He is a neighbor. He may be there justly or unjustly; his circumstances do not remove the duty of Christian mercy. Subject to prudence and rightful obligations, visit or otherwise assist those who are confined, comfort their families, bring what help is lawful, and pray for their conversion and perseverance. A page about More that inspires admiration but leaves the imprisoned forgotten would miss one of his clearest lessons.

The application reaches a family in spiritual exile as well, but only by analogy. Someone separated from familiar Catholic life may feel shut out and unseen. He needs real acts of charity, counsel, and help toward true worship, not the assurance that his isolation is noble in itself. The Church is a mother of living members, not a compliment paid to loneliness. Seek her teaching, lawful sacramental life, and the company of the faithful wherever they are truly available; help another seeker do the same.

At last Anthony turns from comparisons to the Passion. Christ was seized. He was led as a prisoner before Annas, Caiphas, Pilate, and Herod, and kept under guard until the end of His Passion. More does not make His sufferings an ornament placed over ours. He asks us to see that the innocent Lord entered the condition we dread for love of us.^4

This is the heart of the consolation. We need not claim that a cell is pleasant, a family separation slight, or a prisoner's courage inexhaustible. We may look instead to the bound hands of Jesus. The Son of God accepted restraint without ceasing to be sovereign. He was judged by men and remained their Judge. He endured injustice without making injustice holy. From His Passion comes the grace by which a frightened soul may refuse to deny Him.

More's Anthony says that captivity in an unknown land could not carry him into a country where God could not find him.^3 The sentence is no promise of an easy release. St. John the Baptist was not released from his prison, and More himself was not released from the Tower to resume his old life. Yet neither prison had the last word about the faithful servant. Christ, who entered captivity, has passed through death and opened the way to life.

If liberty remains to you, use it well. Visit the confined. Prepare your household in the Faith. Do not build a life that can stand only while every door stays open. If your own freedom is curtailed, name the wrong and seek lawful help; then entrust to Christ the hour you cannot change. If your exile is chiefly a loss of familiar Catholic surroundings, do not romanticize the deprivation. Ask where you may truly receive what the Church gives, and help others find her too.

No door made by men can shut out the Lord who stood bound before their judges. He is not absent when His servants are frightened. Turn to Him not as a thought meant to numb the pain, but as the Savior who knows it, bears it, and calls the soul to fidelity through it.

Sources and notes

1. “Blessed Thomas More,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912), on More's imprisonment and composition of the Dialogue. Digitized 1912 article. The article predates his canonization and thus calls him “Blessed.”
2. St. Thomas More, A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, Book III, chapter XIX. The imagined speakers' argument, Vincent's objection, and the duty of visiting prisoners appear there.
3. More, Dialogue, Book III, chapter XVIII; John 8:34; Hebrews 13:14.
4. More, Dialogue, Book III, chapter XX; Matthew 25:36; John 18–19. The chapter's present-day applications are identified as applications, not claims that More described our circumstances.