Murder in the Cathedral
By: T.S. Eliot
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 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 overborne by mourning or mourning will
be
cast out by joy; so 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 then that He said also, 'Not as the world gives,
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 in the 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 over other men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to
become a ruler of 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 birth day, to remember what is that Peace which he
brought; and because, dear children, I do not think 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.
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