The Christmas Season is a beautiful time to embrace new life, celebrate the birth of hope into the world \u2014 and to cope with the pain of untimely death?<\/p>\n
Death doesn\u2019t take a holiday for Christmas or anything else, but saints have been able to see how the meaning of the baby of Bethlehem is expansive enough to even make sense of dying young.<\/p>\n
Those are key lessons in the lives of both St. Thomas Becket and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.<\/p>\n
For St. Thomas, it was his own martyrdom on Dec. 29, 1170 at age 51 that transformed how the world thought of him, making him one of the most celebrated saints of England.<\/p>\n
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton saw her 34-year-old husband die on Dec. 27, 1803, and her widowhood propelled her into the Catholic Church and the religious life, where she founded a religious congregation and became a pioneer of America\u2019s Catholic school system.<\/p>\n
St. Thomas Becket lived a remarkable life before the end.<\/strong><\/p>\n He was born in London in 1118 \u2014 but his family had crossed the channel from France. Elizabeth\u2019s family also came from England and France, to settle in America. But that\u2019s where the similarities between their early lives stop.<\/p>\n As a young man, Thomas Becket\u2019s star was already rising when the defining relationship of his life began. The Archbishop of Canterbury introduced him to King Henry II.<\/p>\n Becket became not just the personal secretary but the good friend of the king. He reveled in both roles, leading a life of ostentation and camaraderie. Henry trusted his friend to always loyally do his will, so he arranged for the layman Becket to be appointed to a church role: the powerful position of Archbishop of Canterbury, much to the chagrin of the Canterbury monks.<\/p>\n Becket was ordained to the priesthood the day before becoming archbishop, a sacrament Henry apparently didn\u2019t take very seriously, but Thomas did. \u201cBy ordination one is enabled to act as a representative of Christ, Head of the Church, in his triple office of priest, prophet, and king,\u201d says<\/a> the Church. That\u2019s exactly what happened in Becket\u2019s case.<\/p>\n Everyone was astonished when Becket took his new position, and his ordination, seriously. Previously, he had been known for traveling with an extensive staff, carrying many changes of fashionable clothes. Now he started to wear a hairshirt. He had been better known for his menagerie of live monkeys than anything having to do with faith. Now his faith took center stage.<\/p>\n In the end, Becket put his friendship with Jesus before his friendship with the king.<\/strong><\/p>\n Archbishop Becket faced the \u201cinvestiture crisis,\u201d when the state was trying to encroach on ecclesial control, and he decided to defend the Church\u2019s rights against the king. His decision enraged his old friend, but since Becket knew the king\u2019s moods, he managed to stay clear when the king was raging against him. He lived in exile for more than six years in two trips to France. He was well remembered there \u2014 in fact, Pope Alexander III, who met him in France, later canonized him.<\/p>\n Eventually, though, after Becket\u2019s return to England, Henry II uttered the words that live in infamy: \u201cWill nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?\u201d he asked. Men stepped forward to do just that.<\/p>\n Becket was martyred at the altar of his cathedral, praying vespers on Dec. 29, 1170 \u2014 the Liturgy of the Hours\u2019 Evening Prayer in the Octave of Christmas \u2014 and the drama of his death at that place at that time captured the public\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n His death was the biggest news story of his time, and it immediately began to take on the character that the moving hagiography of the 1945 St. Andrew Daily Missal describes:<\/p>\n \u201cAgainst those who seek to enslave the Church, let us neither employ the craft of politics nor the weapons of warfare, but after the example of \u2018the glorious Thomas who fell by the swords of the wicked in the defense of the Church\u2019 (Collect) let us know how to withstand them resolutely with all the moral strength that the defense of the rights of God inspires.\u201d<\/p>\n Becket, who was not particularly well-beloved in life, was embraced by the faithful in death. <\/strong><\/p>\n King Henry instantly regretted what he had done, and spent the rest of his life trying to make amends, including much public penance. To make matters worse for the king, Becket was canonized in 1172, just two years after his death. His shrine had already become a popular pilgrimage destination.<\/p>\n His popularity soared not just in England, but also in his family\u2019s native France, where in the decades after his death, the Chartres cathedral memorialized his exile and martyrdom in an even taller stained glass window than the 20-foot high window that came to grace the Canterbury cathedral.<\/p>\n Popular culture from the 1300s to the 1960s has noted the event. Chaucer\u2019s 14th century The Canterbury Tales<\/em> takes place on a pilgrimage to the saint\u2019s tomb, and Richard Burton and Peter O\u2019Toole star as Thomas and Henry in the 1964 Oscar-winning film Becket<\/em>.<\/p>\n Becket\u2019s martyrdom is now part of a trilogy of death that inserts itself into our Christmas octave each year.<\/strong><\/p>\n The Church commemorates St. Stephen, the first martyr, on the day after Christmas, and the Holy Innocents, the infants Herod slaughtered, two days later. St. Thomas Becket follows on Dec. 29.<\/p>\n Since he was praying Christmas vespers when he died, we know that among St. Thomas Becket\u2019s final thoughts were considerations of the infant child Jesus. T.S. Eliot makes those associations explicit in his play Murder in the Cathedral<\/em> (1935) about the martyrdom.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever 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,\u201d Eliot\u2019s Becket sermonizes.<\/p>\n \u201cIs 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,\u201d he says, adding, ominously:\u00a0 \u201cIt is possible that in a short\u00a0 time you may have yet another martyr.”<\/p>\n Appropriately, in 2020, to commemorate the 850th anniversary of his death, the Vatican sent one of the last relics still known of Becket\u2014after the Reformation scattered the others\u2014to Canterbury: the blood-stained tunic Becket was killed in. Blood supplied the red of Christmas for Becket.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Seton also saw death in the glow of Christmastime.<\/strong><\/p>\n William Seton died in Italy on Dec. 27 in 1803. Elizabeth Seton\u2019s account of her husband\u2019s final days takes its own lessons from this time of year.<\/p>\n From serving by his deathbed, she recalled, \u201cChristmas day he continually reminded himself \u2018this day my Redeemer took pain and sorrow that I might have Peace; this day he gained eternal life for me\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n After Dec. 26 turned to Dec. 27 at midnight \u201che bid me carry the candle out of the room and shut the door. I did so \u2014 and remained on my knees holding his hand and praying for him till a quarter past seven when his dear soul separated gently without any groan or struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n Faith, family and friends are the center of the warm thoughts we have at Christmas. They were also the center of William\u2019s last thoughts, filled with suffering. Elizabeth reports that he said, \u201cMy Christ Jesus have mercy,\u201d and \u201cmy dear wife, my little ones,\u201d and \u201ctell all my friends not to weep for me \u2014 that I die happy, satisfied with the Almighty Will.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Thomas Becket and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton are saints to whom we can turn when faced with loss, especially at Christmastide. After all, that\u2019s what makes Jesus\u2019s coming so joyous: He came to give us life after death.<\/p>\n TOM HOOPES<\/strong>,\u00a0autor m\u00e1s reciente de El Rosario de San Juan Pablo II, es escritor residente en el Benedictine College de Kansas, donde imparte clases. Es anfitri\u00f3n de La extraordinaria Stor<\/a>y podcast sobre la vida de Cristo. Su libro Lo que dijo realmente el Papa Francisco<\/a> ya est\u00e1 disponible en Audible<\/a>. Antiguo reportero en la zona de Washington, D.C., fue secretario de prensa del Presidente del Comit\u00e9 de Medios y Arbitrios de la C\u00e1mara de Representantes de los Estados Unidos y pas\u00f3 10 a\u00f1os como editor del peri\u00f3dico National Catholic Register y de la revista Faith & Family. Su trabajo aparece con frecuencia en el Register, Aleteia y Catholic Digest. Vive en Atchison, Kansas, con su esposa, April, y tiene nueve hijos.<\/em><\/p>\n Image: “Death of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, during the reign of Henry II” (Emile-Edouard Mouchy). Orl\u00e9ans (Loiret) – Museum of Fine Arts. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. Image edited from original photo posted to Flickr by Patrick from Compi\u00e8gne, France.<\/a><\/p>\n