From Prison to a Throne
MASS Gaudeámus omnes
LESSON Hebrews 5: 1-6
GOSPEL St John 10: 11-16
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
On 29 December 1170, St Thomas of Canterbury fell beneath the swords of four knights upon the pavement of his own cathedral. On 7 July 1220, fifty years after that martyrdom, his tomb was opened and his sacred relics were borne solemnly from their first resting place into the magnificent shrine prepared for them in the Trinity Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral.
Archbishop Stephen Langton presided. Bishops and abbots, clergy and nobles, pilgrims from across England and beyond crowded into Canterbury. Among them stood the young King Henry III. Thus, half a century after Thomas had been struck down because a king desired his submission, another king watched as the Church raised the martyr above the heads of princes.
The world had condemned him; Heaven had crowned him. The sword had cast him down; the Church lifted him up. The court that had once demanded his obedience had passed away, but the testimony of the martyr remained.
The Collect of today’s Mass gives us the divine interpretation of that event. Through the prayers of blessed Thomas, we ask that we may be raised “from vice to virtue, and from prison to a throne.”
This is the mystery of every Christian translation. Sin is a prison because it confines man within himself. Grace raises him because it restores him to God. The world imagines that its judgment is final, that those whom it silences are defeated, and that those whom it casts down will be forgotten. But God writes another history. The blood of the martyr becomes a voice; the tomb becomes a throne; the stone upon which he fell becomes the foundation of his triumph.
The feast is therefore not merely the anniversary of a ceremonial movement from one tomb to another. The translation of relics is a solemn confession of the Catholic Faith concerning the human body. The bones of a saint are not the meaningless remnants of a life that has ended. They are the remains of a body washed in Baptism, anointed by sacred chrism, nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ, made the temple of the Holy Ghost, and destined to rise incorruptible at the last day.
The world does not know what to make of the body. It worships it while it is young, exploits it while it is useful, alters it when it becomes inconvenient, and disposes of it when life has departed. The Church alone comprehends its dignity, because the Church alone fully confesses the Incarnation. The Word was made flesh. The Son of God suffered in true flesh, died in true flesh, rose in true flesh and ascended into Heaven in that same glorified humanity.
Therefore matter can become the instrument of grace. The bones of Eliseus restored the dead to life. The sick sought the shadow of St Peter. Cloths that had touched the body of St Paul were carried to the afflicted. The hem of Christ’s garment became the occasion of healing because all power proceeded from Him whose sacred humanity it touched.
The relics translated at Canterbury had belonged to a bishop. Those hands had been anointed to bless, absolve and offer sacrifice. Those knees had bent before the altar. That head had borne the mitre. That voice had proclaimed the law of God before men who possessed the power to destroy the body but not the authority to command the soul.
The Epistle tells us what the priesthood and episcopate truly are: “Every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins.”
A bishop is taken from among men, but he is ordained for the things of God. He does not receive his office in order to sanctify the prevailing opinions of his age, to echo the language of the court, or to make the Church acceptable to those who reject her doctrine. He is constituted a guardian of a treasure which he did not create and which he has no authority to alter. He must teach the Faith, preserve divine worship, defend the law of God and lead souls towards eternity.
When Henry II promoted Thomas Becket to Canterbury in 1162, he believed that he had secured a compliant primate. Thomas had been his Chancellor, his companion and his trusted servant. He had known the magnificence of the royal court and enjoyed the friendship of the king. Henry supposed that the man who had served him faithfully as Chancellor would continue to serve royal policy as Archbishop.
But episcopal consecration is not merely the exchange of one robe for another. The crozier is not an ornament of public office, nor is the mitre the crown of an ecclesiastical courtier. Thomas now stood at the altar as a successor of the Apostles. He had become responsible before God for the liberty of the Church and the salvation of souls.
The king had not understood what grace might make of his former servant.
Before the relics of Thomas were translated from the crypt to the shrine, Thomas himself had undergone a far greater translation. God translated him from courtier to confessor, from magnificence to penance, from calculation to fortitude, from the favour of a king to the fellowship of the martyrs.
This interior transformation is expressed with remarkable beauty in the Secret of today’s Mass. The Church addresses Almighty God, who by His heavenly blessing changes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, and asks that we ourselves may be turned again to His mercy and conformed to His good pleasure.
The God who changes bread and wine also changes men. He takes what is weak and makes it steadfast. He takes the ambitious and teaches them humility. He takes the fearful and clothes them with courage. He takes the compromised and makes them confessors. Grace is not a religious decoration placed upon an otherwise worldly life. Grace seizes the whole man, purifies him, consecrates him and makes him an offering.
Thomas had stood at the altar and offered the Holy Sacrifice. In the end, he was required to become what he offered. The priest who consecrated the Victim was himself conformed to the Victim. The shepherd followed the Good Shepherd; the member followed the Head; the servant followed the Master unto the shedding of blood.
Hence the Gospel appointed for this feast: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”
Our Lord does not define the shepherd by eloquence, popularity, diplomatic skill or administrative competence. The final measure of the shepherd is sacrifice. He belongs to the sheep so completely that, when the wolf comes, he places his own body between the flock and the danger.
The hireling may appear indistinguishable from the shepherd while the weather is calm. He may wear the same garments, carry the same staff and speak the same language. The difference becomes manifest when fidelity carries a price. Then the hireling discovers reasons for silence. He confuses prudence with inaction, peace with the avoidance of conflict, and obedience with the surrender of responsibility. He may retain the office while abandoning its purpose.
The true shepherd remains because the sheep have been entrusted to him by Christ. He knows that he must answer not merely for what he has done, but for the truths he failed to teach, the errors he refused to correct, the sacred inheritance he allowed to be diminished, and the souls scattered because he feared men more than God.
St Thomas did not die because he despised authority. He died because he understood it. All true authority comes from God, and therefore no human authority can be exercised as though God did not exist. Henry II possessed real authority as king, but he did not possess authority over the divine constitution of the Church. The Crown had rights, but it did not own the priesthood. The State could govern temporal affairs, but it could not lawfully require the Church to become an instrument of political convenience.
Thomas resisted the king because both Crown and mitre stand beneath the kingship of Jesus Christ.
This is an important distinction in an age which alternates between rebellion and servility. Catholic obedience is neither self-will nor blind submission. It is a moral virtue governed by faith, reason and divine law. The martyr is not one who refuses all authority, but one who recognises the highest authority so clearly that he cannot obey a lesser power against God.
This is why St Thomas remains an uncomfortable saint. It is easy to honour the martyr when the controversy is safely buried in the past. It is harder to stand beside the confessor while the swords are still drawn. The dead martyr receives shrines; the living witness is accused of being troublesome, disobedient, divisive or extreme.
Yet every age presents the Church with the same temptation. The world asks her to surrender some portion of the truth for the sake of peace. It asks her pastors to soften doctrine, obscure moral law, diminish sacred worship, or treat the inheritance of Tradition as though it were a burden from which modern man must be liberated. The demand is usually presented as moderate, pastoral and necessary for unity.
But the shepherd cannot purchase peace by abandoning the sheep, nor preserve unity by surrendering the Faith which alone makes the Church one.
Nearly three centuries after the Translation, Henry VIII ordered the shrine of St Thomas to be destroyed. Its gold and jewels were seized, its splendour dismantled, and the place of pilgrimage laid waste. Yet the destruction of the shrine only proved again the impotence of earthly power before the judgment of God. The king could destroy the monument, but he could not revoke the martyrdom. He could scatter earthly treasures, but he could not remove Thomas from the calendar of the Church or silence the Mass offered in his honour.
Today Canterbury’s shrine is empty, but the witness remains. England still needs what Thomas represented: a Church that remembers she belongs first to Christ; bishops who understand that the mitre is not a distinction but an obligation; priests ready to become the sacrifice they offer; and faithful who will not exchange divine truth for social acceptance.
The commemoration of SS Cyril and Methodius deepens the same lesson. In the ninth century these apostolic brothers crossed frontiers, endured suspicion and opposition, and laboured so that the Slavic peoples might hear the Gospel and worship God. Thomas defended the Church’s liberty against political absorption; Cyril and Methodius exercised that liberty in missionary action. The Church must be free, not for her own comfort, but so that she may preach Christ, offer His sacrifice, administer His sacraments and gather the nations into His one fold.
The judgment of this feast therefore falls upon us all. Few will stand before kings, but every Christian stands before the tribunal of human respect. At work, among friends, within families and before the spirit of the age, we are repeatedly asked for some small act of surrender: a truth left unspoken, a sin politely approved, a duty neglected, a sacred thing treated as negotiable.
Martyrdom begins before the sword. It begins when a man resolves that there are truths he will not deny, commandments he will not betray, and sacred obligations he will not abandon, whatever the cost.
Let us ask, then, for the translation promised in today’s Collect. May God raise us from vice to virtue, from fear to fortitude, from compromise to confession, and from the prison of human respect to the throne of Christian liberty. May He translate priests from functionaries into victims, bishops from hirelings into shepherds, and the whole Church from worldly accommodation into renewed fidelity to her crucified Lord.
For what happened at Canterbury was not finally a contest between an archbishop and a king. It was the continuation in one member of the Church of the mystery of Christ Himself: cast down but raised up, rejected by men but chosen by God, slain by earthly power but enthroned in Heaven.
When every throne of this world has fallen, when every decree has turned to dust, and when the bodies of the saints rise from their tombs, Thomas will stand not before the judgment seat of a king, but before the throne of the Lamb whom he followed unto blood.
May St Thomas of Canterbury pray for the Church, for England and for all her pastors: that they may know the sheep entrusted to them, confront the wolf, preserve the Faith, defend the altar, and lay down their lives after the example of Jesus Christ, the one Good Shepherd, to whom be honour, dominion and glory, world without end. Amen.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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