To our everlasting salvation

"More have I not to say (my Lords) but like as the blessed Apostle St. Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now both twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your Lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation." - St. Thomas More to the commissioners who had just condemned him to death

For a lawyer who would side with the devil ("his cause being good") over his own father to respond in this way after being sentened to death based on testimony everyone in the room knew everyone in the room knew was perjury -- that's what I call heroic virtue. In particular, the virtue of charity: the habit of loving others through loving God.

I think it's fair to say that if you don't habitually love other people, you are not going to actually love them at the moment when, say, they shoot a nasty look at your tie, or wrongly order your hanging, drawing, and quartering. Or even when they insult your child.

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