St Thomas Becket's Day (and T.S. Eliot's thoughts on suffering & joy in the Christian life)

The martyrdom of St Thomas Becket

Go HERE for an outline of St Thomas Becket’s story.

Today I share with you some words from T.S. Eliot’s play, “Murder in the Cathedral,” which is all about Becket’s death. They are applicable to all martyrs, and indeed, all Christians, for they are T.S. Eliot’s meditation on the intertwining of sorrow and joy in the Christian life.

The Archbishop preaches in the Cathedral 

on Christmas morning, 1170:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear children of God, my sermon this morning will be a very short one. I wish only that you should ponder and meditate on the deep meaning and mystery of our masses of Christmas Day. For whenever Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of men, and offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It was in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross. Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overcome by mourning or mourning will be cast out by joy; so that it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason. But think for a while on the meaning of this word “peace.” Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples: “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbors, the barons at peace with the King, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember that He said also, “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” So then, He gave to his disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord’s Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of his first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world’s is. A Christian martyrdom is no accident. Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.

I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ’s birthday, to remember what is that peace which he brought; and because, dear children, I do not think that I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Wisdom from Fr Schmemann

Alexander Schmemann (13 September 1921 - 13 December 1983) was a prominent 20th century Orthodox Christian priest, teacher, and writer. He was born in Tallinn (Reval) Estonia to Russian émigrés. His family moved to France, where he received his university education. He married Juliana Osorguine in 1943, before completing his theological studies at the Orthodox Theological Institute of St. Sergius in Paris (where he studied with the noted Russian theologian, Sergei Bulgakov, amongst others) and was ordained a priest in 1946. From 1946-51, Fr Schmemann taught church history at St. Sergius. He was invited to join the faculty of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, then in New York City, where he taught from 1951 onwards. When the seminary moved to its present campus in Crestwood, New York in 1962, Fr Schmemann assumed the post of dean, which he would hold until his death. He also served as adjunct professor at Columbia University, New York University, Union Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary in New York. Much of his focus at St Vladimir's was on liturgical theology. (From Wikipedia)

Fr Schmemann's writings contain so much wisdom, which is why Christians of East and West quote him often. I share with you today two particular gems:

THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

From the religious point of view, nothing is more harmful than to live by illusions in an artificially recreated past, seeking in 'ancient, venerable and colorful rites' an escape from a prosaic and burdensome present. Such a religious attitude, quite common in our days, openly contradicts the Christian faith, which is aimed at transforming life and not at supplying religious substitutes for life. To understand this study as an appeal simply to restore the past is to misunderstand it, for there is no simple restoration, nor can there ever be. Equally harmful, however, is the attitude which rejects the past simply because it is past, which, in other words, accepts at its face value modern rhetoric about the radical 'revolution' in man's worldview that makes it impossible for him to 'continue' in any ideas of the past. If we do not believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church today as He guided her yesterday and shall guide her until the end of the world, that Christ is 'the same yesterday, and today, and forever' (Heb. 13:8), then obviously we do not believe in the Church, and she is either a precious 'cultural heritage' to be preserved or an archaic past to be discarded.

If, however, we believe in the Church, then the study of her past has only one goal: to find, and to make ours again and again, that which in her teaching and life is truly eternal, i.e. which precisely transcends the categories of past, present and future and has the power to transform our lives in all ages and in all situations."

From Fr Schmemann's book, Of Water & The Spirit, 149-50.

SORROW NOT RELACED BUT TRANSFORMED

Holy Saturday is a neglected day in parish life. Few people attend the Services. Popular piety usually reduces Holy Week to one day - Holy Friday. This day is quickly replaced by another - Easter Sunday. Christ is dead and then suddenly alive. Great sorrow is suddenly replaced by great joy. In such a scheme Holy Saturday is lost.

In the understanding of the Church, sorrow is not replaced by joy; it is transformed into joy. This distinction indicates that it is precisely within death the Christ continues to effect triumph.

From Fr Schmemann's article, The Orthodox Celebration of Great and Holy Saturday, which is online HERE.

HAPPY EASTER!

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

That little cliché got worked into a Gospel song many years ago (admittedly a bit corny by today’s standards!) performed by friends of mine, for which I, in my teens, provided the keyboard accompaniment. The thing about clichés and other proverbial sayings is that we’ll never stamp them out because in their own way they capture the paradoxes we know to be real, including the compulsive yearning and dreaming that is as much part of what it means to be human as the sense of hopelessness we sometimes endure.

Well, we need to remind ourselves that it IS always darkest before the dawn!

One of the most graphic images of this in the Gospels is when Jesus, the night before he died, spoke of the devastation his disciples were about to experience - of course, nothing like the suffering and pain of the cross, but nonetheless real to them. He said,

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:20-21)

A woman’s extraordinary - and split second - transition from the anguish of labour to the joy of birth, is a great wonder. The Lord said that the pain to be suffered by the disciples would just as swiftly give way to joy, “and no one will take your joy from you.”

The last twelve months have been rough for many people who regularly read this blog ... floods, cyclones, bushfires, economic hardships, earthquakes and difficult insurance companies. (I must say, in the case of Queenslanders ... you’re a special people with a great capacity for resilience that I came to know for myself when I moved to Brisbane in 1995, and I salute you. That resilience and your courage has been on show to the whole world in recent times.)

But just as painful – and in some respects more so - has been the great and ongoing struggle for Anglican catholics to discern the Lord’s will in terms of “staying” or “going.” In England I know personally many priests and laypeople just barely hanging on who are in spiritual and emotional turmoil while they await the appointment of a new Bishop of Fulham and PEVs. (In Australia it’s a hundred times worse, because such episcopal ministry continues to be refused as a matter of principle.)

Also difficult to manage is the animosity that has developed between old friends. We need to remember, whatever decisions we feel in conscience we must make, that the Tiber is not a very wide river!

Maybe this year during Holy Week – and perhaps for a long time beforehand - we have entered into the sorrow of those disciples in a special way. To be honest, I know that is true for me. If it’s your experience, too, and even if outwardly things don’t seem to get much better for a while, you could do worse than pray through the following little bits that I have decided to share with you. They certainly encourage me.

Jesus is Lord; he is gloriously and triumphantly risen from the dead (though his body still bears the wounds he suffered). He shares his victory with us here and now as we journey through this life. His love is real, and his light scatters the darkness and gloom. We hang on, we press on, knowing that we are already "risen with Christ" and "sit with him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6)." In fact, one interpretation of the Sursum Corda in the Mass is that when the priest sings "Lift up your hearts" and we reply "We lift them up to the Lord", what we are really saying is - in defiance of all that would drag us into the depths - "by the power of the Holy Spirit we hold our hearts up, we keep holding them up in the heavenly places, the real epi-centre of our worship where the victory of Jesus is already manifest."

It's all a matter of perspective.

Let's pray for a renewal of our perspective as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord.

With the assurance of my love and prayers, I say to everyone, especially family, friends and colleagues: “Happy Easter.”

"With you, Lord, I will flee,

that I may gain in you Life in every place.

The prison with you is no prison,

for in you man goes up into Heaven:

the grave with you is no grave,

for you are the Resurrection."

- St. Ephraim the Syrian

(The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: 2nd Series Vol. XIII; p. 236)

Easter says to us: have faith! Faith does not mean that we first try to see things in a coherent and intelligible shape and then conclude that God is true. Faith is more like when the women came to the tomb while it was still very dark, and they wondered who could move away the stone as it was very heavy: and look - the stone is gone!

When things are very dark, when human possibilities are exhausted, when we are at the end of our tether, God acts. Easter defines for all time the character of Christian faith: human weakness; divine power; I can't. God can; I am weak, God is strong; I am a sinner, God forgives. Does this sound fanciful?

lt was such a faith that enabled the aposties to carry the gospel into a hostile world. It was such a faith that sustained Christian men and women again and again throughout the centuries. lt is like a coin that is always on one side - frailty, penitence, death, and on the other side - power, forgiveness and life. Let the words of St John sound in our hearts today: 'This is the victory that overcomes the world - our faith' (1 John 5:4-5).

- Michael Ramsey

(Canterbury Pilgrim p 161)

The Eucharist sets you on the way of Christ.

It takes you into his redeeming death

and gives you a share

in the most radical deliverance possible.

And already the light of the resurrection,

the new creation,

is streaming through it from beyond.

Whenever you sit at table with the risen Lord,

it is the first day of the week,

very early in the morning.

- Rule for a New Brother

(Dutch Blessed Sacrament Fathers)

Alleluia!

This holy and blessed day is the first of the week,

the king and master of all days,

the feast of feasts and the season of seasons.

On this day we bless Christ forever and ever.

O faithful, come,

celebrate the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus the Christ.

This is the day the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad.

Alleluia!

Now that we have seen the resurrection of the Christ,

Let us adore the all-holy Lord Jesus,

the only sinless One.

We bow in worship before your cross, O Christ.

We praise and glorify your resurrection

for you are our God and we have no other.

We magnify your name.

All your faithful come.

Let us adore the holy resurrection of the Christ.

Behold, through your cross joy has come to the world!

Let us always bless the Lord.

Let us sing his resurrection.

By enduring for us the pain of the cross,

He has crushed death by his death.

- Orthodox Liturgy

The Psalms - The Scaffolding of our Prayer

Following the example of the Jewish people and of Jesus himself, the early Christians kept using the Old Testament collection of Psalms as the basic scaffolding of prayer. That has continued in the catholic tradition of the Church right down to our day. In fact, Anglican clergy are supposed to pray their way through the book of Psalms every month.

Each of us has our favourite psalms. And - if the truth be known - there are the psalms most of us would avoid if left to our own devices. You now what I mean - the ones which seem full of depression, despondency and anger, where the Psalmist even seems to be shaking his fist at God. Yet, when we are honest, we must admit that sometimes those are the Psalms which reflect how we feel.

It is easy to have prayer lives that help us avoid coming to terms with what is going on inside us. We all fall into that trap, and it's not what God wants, because ultimately it will not help us. Using the psalms in the way we are supposed to is one means of bringing the whole of our lives with their uneven rhythms before God, including the upset, temperamental and sinful bits, so as to become increasingly open to his grace and the healing power of his love.

I have noticed that more and more lay people are seeing the benefit of this, and are using forms of Morning and/or Evening Prayer each day, with a systematic praying of the psalms.

There is a little book by that title. In my youth I feasted on Praying the Psalms by Thomas Merton (1915-1968). It was given to me by the late Father Austin Day, who even preached a series of sermons based on Merton's reflections.

Merton is not all that fashionable these days (and, I must admit, some of my friends think he is not always as orthodox as he could be), but recently I was glad to see that Praying the Psalms has been reprinted. I enthusiastically commend it to you, and guarantee that if you read it your appreciation of the psalms will grow. (You can find it at Amazon.com if your local Christian bookstore doesn't sell it.)

In one of his most memorable passages Merton says:

"When we bring our sorrows to the Psalter we find all our spiritual problems mirrored in the inspired words of the psalmist. But we do not necessarily find these problems analysed and solved.

"Few of the psalms offer us abstract principles capable of serving as a ready and sensible palliative for interior suffering. On the contrary, what we generally find is a suffering just as concrete as our own, and more profound.

"We encounter this suffering at one of its most intense and articulate moments. How many of the psalms are simply cries of desperate anguish: 'Save me, O God, for the waters have come up even to my throat. I sink in the deep mire where no footing is : I have come into deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with crying out, my throat is parched: my eyes fail with watching so long for my God.' (Psalm 69:1-3)

"What were the dispositions of the saints and the fathers in chanting such a psalm? They did not simply 'consider' the psalm as they passed over it, drawing from it some pious reflection, some nosegay. They entered into the 'action' of the psalm. They allowed themselves to be absorbed in the spiritual agony of the psalmist and of the one he represented. They allowed their sorrows to be swallowed up in the sorrows of this mysterious Personage, and then they found themselves swept away, on the strong tide of his hope, into the very depth of God. ''But to you, Lord, I make my prayer : at an acceptable time, answer me, O God, in your abundant goodness: and with your sure deliverance.' (vv13,14)

"So, in the end, all sorrow turns to triumph and to praise: 'And I will praise the name of God in a song: and glorify him with thanksgiving . . . for God will save Zion : he will rebuild the cities of Judah' (vv32-37)."

The above is part of a longer article I wrote for my web site.