The Feast Day of Thomas Becket

Today is the feast day of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered by men loyal to English king Henry II on this day in 1170.  I hadn't taken much notice of this feast day until today, when I read about it in Bruce Epperly's I Wonder as I Wander:  The 12 Days of Christmas with Madeleine L'Engle.

It's interesting to stumble across this feast day after spending much of yesterday thinking about the church's remembrance of the Holy Innocents while at the same time reading analysis of our current situation--so much human suffering, and so many powerful people just looking away.

Becket was murdered for telling the rich and powerful what they could not do--all while being somewhat rich and powerful himself.  It was a time of shifting loyalties, but that statement seems true of much of history.  Becket had fled before and managed to stay alive, but at the end, he refused to bolt himself inside Canterbury Cathedral, saying it was not right to turn God's house into a fortress.  He was killed in the cathedral.

His trajectory reminds me a bit of Oscar Romero's, the archbishop of El Salvador, martyred in 1980.  Both trajectories remind me that God can use us all, and that standing up to the rich and powerful is often a way to get killed.

Epperly's ending for his Dec. 29 meditation is a good way to end today's meditation:  "In the footsteps of Thomas Becket, who death is remembered on Dec. 29, the church must follow God's vision rather than the state's and challenge the state whenever it places political ideology, profit, or power above human and planetary well-being" (p. 72).