A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. When the day came to purify them according to the law of Moses, the couple, that is Mary and Joseph, brought Jesus up to Jerusalem so that he could be presented to the lord. For it is written in the law of the lord, every first born male shall be consecrated to the lord. They came to offer in sacrifice a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons in accord with a dictate in the law of the lord. Now there lived in Jerusalem a certain man named Simeon.
Simeon was just and pious and awaited the consolation of Israel. That is the restoration of the kingdom and the expulsion of the Jew of the Romans. And the holy spirit was upon him. It was revealed to to Simeon by the holy spirit that he would not experience death until he had seen the anointed of the lord. Simeon came to the temple now inspired by the spirit.
And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform for him the customary ritual of the law, Simeon took the child in his arms and blessed god in these words. Now, lord, you can dismiss your servant in peace. You have fulfilled your word, For my eyes have witnessed your saving deed displayed for all peoples to see, a revealing light to the gentiles and the glory of your people, Israel. The child's father and mother were marveling at what was being said about their child. Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, this child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a sign that will be opposed, and you yourself shall be pierced with a sword so that the thought of many hearts may be revealed.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today is the feast of saint Thomas Becket, and we can't just let that pass in silence. Thomas Becket, you know, is the great saint of Canterbury, and it's about Canterbury that Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales.
And the remember, in the Canterbury Tales, the blissful marker is Thomas Becket. It was Thomas Becket and his martyrdom and his being canonized as they did it in those days, only three years after his death in 1170. He it was who made Canterbury the great target of pilgrimages in the twelfth century. This is the twelfth century. He dies in 1170.
That is Thomas Becket. Now Thomas Becket is a tremendously important figure no matter how you look at it. What he stood for or what he opposed was an absolute monarchy. And that's why Henry the eighth had no use for him, and they destroyed his shrine in the sixteenth century because he was a living memorial, standing for the opposition to Henry the eighth and all that Henry stood for, to make himself absolute tyrant of England and also of the church. Now the story of Becket, of course, is absolutely it's paradoxical.
He was a young man. This is twelfth century member. Henry Henry the second is the king. Henry the second was about fifteen years younger than Thomas. But they were great friends.
And Becket, of course, being of a noble family of the times, he became archdeacon of Canterbury. Now be be you see, here's where you have to be a little careful. Archdeacon. That doesn't mean he was a priest. It only means he was a cleric, which means he had been tortured.
And when you became a cleric, you became then a subject of the church and even as regards law. You weren't subject to civil law anymore. You were subject to canonical law, canon law, and the courts of the church. You had two complete systems. And he was a right, favorable young man.
He took advantage of his position, of his wealth. We are told he was handsome, debonair, extremely strong, muscular. Well, he he was I don't know how much of this is true, of course, but the thing is that's the picture we have of him. Everything about him is noble, magnificent. Now notice, we Saint Thomas Aquinas has teach treats magnificence as a virtue to do great things.
And this young man had that virtue of magnificence and and put on big shows. So when Henry the second when the when the Sea Of Canterbury became vacant, Henry saw his chance of getting his good and loyal friend Thomas into that most important job. That was because Canterbury was the prime primatial see of England. So that he figured that that Thomas would be with him in his very strong stand against the papacy, and also in his strong stand to become the the the divine and single monarchical voice of England. It wasn't merely a fight against the papacy.
It was also Henry the second's fight to make himself the absolute ruler of England. Absolute. So he figured if he could get Thomas to be the archbishop of Canterbury, he had it made. Thomas didn't want the job. This is the one point I want to make.
He didn't want the job. He turned it down. He turned his back on it, but they practically forced it upon him and over the opposition of many bishops and monks because they couldn't see this frivolous young man being archbishop of Canterbury. But let me tell you, with all his frivolity, with all his sportsmanship, and his his devotion to magnificence in the luxurious life, we are told that he remained a very devout young man and very chaste, which was pretty exceptional. At least that's what the record says.
Now, when he became Archbishop of Canterbury, because now he had to be now he was an ordained priest. He was the bishop. He did a right about face. He kept up his he didn't cease being a man who who did things on a big scale. He still cultivated the virtue of magnificence.
But he became a staunch defender of the rights of Rome. See, this is a very important point when you come to the sixteenth century with Henry the eighth. And you can easily understand why Henry the eighth didn't want any parts of Thomas the Becket. So the France Henry the second found himself being confronted by his good and devoted and very affectionate friend, Thomas, who would have no parts of his political aspirations, whether it be to be the practically a tyrannical monarch of England or and at the same time, to be the head, you might say, of the English church, taking precedence over the holy scene. The upshot of it was that Thomas had a fleet of France to save his life, and he lived in exile about six years over there.
And then there was a reconciliation, a negotiated peace. Becket came back to take up residence in the Sea Of Canterbury. And then one day, the king had had indicated that he wanted Thomas removed. So four very gallant knights proceeded to carry out Henry the second's good wishes, so they slaughtered Thomas Becket in his own cathedral. And three years later, November, Thomas Becket was cat was made a saint.
And his the shrine erected over his tomb became, as I say, the most the most popular center of pilgrimage in England. The Canterbury Tales is just is focused on that. Now here's another instance where you see you take Saint Paul, you take Saint Augustine of Hippo, you take a man like Thomas of Becket. Here you have three men who who start out being, well, let us say, roughly speaking, anti religion. Now that's that's speaking very generally, very generally.
And then quite suddenly, very suddenly, they seem to change radically, seem to change radically, and saint Paul becomes the great champion of Christ. Saint Augustine from being this wandering minstrel type that the that he is fictionalized as being, he was never that, but from being with that type that the popular mind holds him to be, he then becomes a great saint and bishop of Hippo. Here you have Thomas of Becket, who is a frivolous young man devoted to the life of luxury, magnificent, playing around all the time. And then quite suddenly, quite suddenly, his whole life has changed. I'll give you another one, Savonarola.
Savonarola, who became the great what shall I say about Florence? What he did there in the fifteenth century. He changed the whole city, at least for a time, you know, and wound up being burned in the the city of Florence. Some of you have seen the the spot where that happened, I'm sure. Now the thing that impresses me about these so called radical abrupt changes is this: They weren't that all radical.
They may have been abrupt, but they weren't that all radical. And furthermore, it wasn't by a choice. Saint Augustine, we are saying, we're told was thrown to the ground. He didn't he didn't choose to be thrown to the ground, but that's what the that's what the New Testament says. He was thrown to the ground.
He was blinded, and he came up a new man. And instead of being the persecutor of the church of Jesus Christ, he then became its most loyal champion. But where was the change? Wasn't he a devoted wasn't he devoted to Christ or to God before? He certainly was.
He certainly was. No one persecuted the the Christians more strongly than Paul. He says that himself. Saint Augustine, they talk about this radical change. Was it so radical?
Here was a man who was utterly devoted to truth. He was never the lascivious playboy that's that some people would like to make him to be out of his confessions. He never was that. But he definitely was a non Christian. He was definitely a Manichean.
He goes up to up to Milano up to Milan, meets Ambrose, and then quite suddenly, he hears a voice in the garden. He's a changed man. Is he that changed? Here we have Thomas of Becket. He's ordained a priest, a bishop, becomes archbishop of Canterbury, and he apparently is a changed man.
Was he? We are told that he was always devout, that he was always chaste. He didn't want to be an ecclesiastic in the sense of being an active ecclesiastic. They made him be that. Augustine was made to be a bishop.
He didn't choose it. He was elected by popular consent or assent. And Savonarola, the same thing. He thought he was hearing voices. His was in a very abrupt change.
Saint Francis of Assis is another one. The point I'm making is these changes, while they certainly were radical in a sense, there was a foundation for them. There were antecedents. There were precedents, things going ahead that gave you more than an inkling of the character you were dealing with. And these all these instances I've mentioned, they you can see the you can use it hand you can call it fate, you can call it the hand of providence, you can call it God.
But the point is, in most instances, the four I mentioned, they didn't do what they did by a radical choice. It was sort of forced upon them in one way or another. That's where I think we come in. There's one thing we have to do is to be saved, and the one way of doing it is to is to do god's will. And what is god's will?
There is the question. It isn't always what we most want. Sometimes it's what we most do not want. When Christ was in the Garden Of Gethsemane, he begged God not to have to go through with his passion. So the will of God is not it's I think it's much harder to do than it is to discover.
And in many instances, we are sort of blind to it because we don't want to see it. And in most instances, we don't have to hunt for it. It's on our threshold, right at our feet. And so as we today celebrate the feast of Saint Thomas Becket, the great twelfth century saint, let us renew our own faith in Jesus Christ and in the living voice of his church. It is for that principle that Thomas Becket in the twelfth century died.
The name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.