*** *** *** The joint feast day honors St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. Even at great cost, these two men were faithful to truth and conscience.

— St. John (d. 1535) was Bishop of Rochester and named cardinal shortly before his death; St. Thomas (d. 1535) was a lawyer and Lord Chancellor of England. In the same year, both men would be executed by order of King Henry VIII for refusing to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church of England and opposing the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. St. Thomas More’s famous last words: “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”