Welcome to our daily rosary meditation. Let's begin in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Let's call to mind all those we've promised to pray for.

Today is the feast of St. Thomas More. After graduating from law school and before he was married,

Thomas More lived for four years at the London Charter House

near a Carthusian monastery so that he could participate in the monk's life of prayer and

self-mastery.

This helped him develop his own prayer life, which enabled him to overcome vice and become

virtuous as well as to discern his vocation of marriage.

And in these four years he discovered the need for the grace that came from the sacraments and prayer,

and as a result he began the spiritual practices he would maintain for the rest of his life. And even though he was a husband, a father of six children, a lawyer, a statesman, a theologian, an author, a social reformer, and the Lord High Chancellor to King Henry

the 8th of England, which was the highest ranking office in the government next to the king, so a pretty busy

guy with a lot of responsibilities, he maintained those spiritual practices. He started each day with meditation, study, and

mass.

Thomas Moore wrote, if you love your health, if you desire to be secure from the

snares of the devil, from the storms of this world, from the hands of your

enemies, if you long to be acceptable to God,

if you covet everlasting happiness,

then let no day pass

without at least once presenting yourself to God in prayer,

falling down before him flat on the ground

with a humble affection and a devout mind.

Not merely with your lips, but from the innermost recesses of your soul.

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