The Divine Lamp

The Dialogue was written by St Thomas More as he sat in the Tower of London awaiting a possibly gruesome death for his fidelity to the faith. The main characters are a young man named Vincent and his uncle Anthony, an aging man of wisdom and intelligence and faith who is on his death-bed. Vincent begins the Dialogue by noting that normally people approached the dying in order to give them comfort. The situation of the world has become such, however, that they, and he, now approach the dying to receive comfort from them. He then speaks about all the comfort his uncle has given him over the years and his anxiety at losing such comfort with Anthony’s death. Anthony responds by rejecting both the comfort the worldly give, and the idea that his death will mean a lack of comfort for Vincent, since God is the chief comfort of all who believe.

Vincent: Who would have though, O good uncle, a few years past, that those in this country who would visit their friends lying in disease and sickness would come, as I do now, to seek and fetch comfort from them? Or who would have thought that in giving comfort to them they would use the way that I may well use with you? For albeit that priests and friars be wont to call upon the sick men to remember death, yet we worldy friends, for fear of discomforting them, have ever had a way here in Hungary of lifting up their hearts and putting them in good hope of life.

But now, my good uncle, the world has become such, and so great perils appear to fall at hand, that I think the greatest comfort a have is when he can see that he shall soon be gone. And we who are likely to live long here in wretchedness have need of someone like you to give us some comforting counsel against tribulation. For you have so longed lived virtuously, and are so learned in the law of God that very few are better in this country. And you have had much experience and trials concerning the things we now fear, having been taken prisoner two times in Turkey, and now likely to depart before long from this life.

That may be your great comfort, good uncle, since you depart to God. But those of us who are your kin you shall leave behind as sorry comfortless orphans. For to all of us your good help, comfort, and counsel have long been our great support. You have not been like an uncle to some, and to others a kin farther removed; rather, to one and all you have been as a father.

Anthony: My good nephew, I cannot hardly deny that there is indeed, not only here in Hungary, but also in almost all places in Christendom, this customary and unchristian manner of comforting. And in any sick man such does more harm than good, by enticing him in time of sickness to look and long for life and leave off meditating on death, judgement, heaven and hell-the very thing that should occupy much of his time, not only in sickness but also his whole life long. Indeed, this manner of comfort which you spoke of seems to my mind to be madness when directed towards a man of my years. For as we well know a young man die soon, just as certainly as an old man will not live long. And yet there is (as Tully says) no man so old but that, for all that, he nonetheless hopes that he may live one year more. Upon this he thinks in his frail folly, and with this though he gives himself that manner of comfort of which you spoke. Then other men come along with like words of comfort thereby adding sticks to the fire which burns up the pleasant moisture which should most refresh him–the wholesome dew of God’s grace, by which he should wish that it be God’s will to be gone from this life, and to be with him in heaven.

Now, as for you taking my departing from you so heavily, basing it as you do, in your goodness, upon the help and comfort I have given in times past…I say that I wish to God that I had done to you and to others twice as much more as I reckon it was my duty to do! So you see, to reckon yourselves comfortless when God takes me hence from this world, thinking that your chief comfort stood in me-this is, I think to cast away a strong staff so as to lean upon a rotten reed. For God is, and must be your comfort, and not I. And he is a sure comforter who (as he said to his disciples) never leaves his servants as orphans, not even when he departed from them in death. But he sent them a comforter as he had promised; the Holy Spirit from his Father, and also himself. And he gave them assurance and made them sure that he would forever dwell with them. Therefore, if you be part of his flock and believe his promise, how can you be comfortless in any tribulation, when Christ and his Holy Spirit, and with them their inseparable Father, if you put full trust and confidence in them, are never either one finger-breadth of space nor one minute of time from you?

To be continued

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