Thomas Becket                                                                 12-29-04 dcn.ca 

    Thomas Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury, England in the 1100’s. This roughly would correspond with being Archbishop of a present day Archdiocese here in the United States.

    In the mid 1960’s there was a movie made of his life, // it stared Richard Burton as Thomas Becket and Peter O’Tool as King Henry the second.

    More or less the story goes that Thomas and Henry were good buddies in there younger years and, enjoyed what we would call now a “bachelor life style” together.

As time went on Henry was crowned King of England and Thomas ordained a deacon and made Lord Chancellor. // This gave King Henry an idea; he called his old buddy Deacon Thomas over and suggested a deal. He would make Deacon Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury and together they would pretty much run England and things would be just like the “good old days”.

    Deacon Thomas, after his good deaconate formation, would have nothing to do with it. And warred King Henry several times not to appoint him to that position. In spit of Deacon Thomas’s protests, the appointment took place. And, as it turned out,  the king found Thomas had the firmest of resolve to serve the Church first and The King of England second.// This lead to all kinds of clashes between them and in a fit of rage the king wished aloud to be rid of Thomas. Four of the king’s aids took this as a command and murdered Thomas in Canterbury cathedral. // He was declared a saint in 1173.

    Hopefully choosing allegiance to our Church won’t cause us to be martyred in the same way as Thomas and others. But, we can expect to be made uncomfortable at times and sometimes very uncomfortable with our choice// not only by others but also by shadows and memories of our past.

    Therefore, this choice of ours requires that we persevere in coming to the Table of the Word and Body of Christ. // Our partaking in these gifts, provided us by the Lord, // nourishes and strengthens our resolve in our continuing effort to follow Christ and His Church.