Simeon and Becket

First, on this Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas, we encounter Simeon again.

Back in 2020, this was a Living Faith day for me and I wrote this – written and turned in during the spring when “just two weeks to stop the spread” was still being hopefully and trustingly bandied about, btw –

Another calendar year is drawing to an end. When I look back, what do I see? What emotions do the events of this year’s journey around the sun bring? Perhaps the year has been dominated by sadness or discord, and we won’t be sorry at all to see it go.

Perhaps 2020 will stand out in our memories for unexpected and surprising moments of joy. Maybe we’ll be glad for what we learned, even if that schooling was difficult and unwelcome.

In that moment in the Temple, Simeon knew he was in the presence of someone special. He knew God was at work. My challenge, as I reflect back and look forward, is to remember that this child who Simeon welcomed was with me every moment of this past year. And because of that, no matter what, because of him, I can move on the journey—in peace.

Remember Art & Theology? This link takes you to posts tagged “Simeon” – at which you will find some wonderful art, including the piece below from a Bolivian artist and what the blogger says is the painting that was on Rembrandt’s easel when he died.

And a poem by Richard Bauckham, on waiting:

…Two aged lives incarnate
century on century
of waiting for God, their waiting-room
his temple, waiting on his presence,
marking time by practicing

the cycle of the sacrifices,
ferial and festival,
circling onward, spiralling
towards a centre out ahead,
seasons of revolving hope.

Holding out for God who cannot
be given up for dead, holding
him to his promises—not now,
not just yet, but soon, surely,
eyes will see what hearts await.

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It’s also the optional memorial of St. Thomas Becket.

It is from a small book by Anglo-Catholic Enid Chadwick called My Book of the Church’s Year.  Reprint edition available here but can be viewed online here.

He’s in the Loyola Kids Book of Saints in the section “Saints are people who tell the truth.”

Here’s the last page of the entry, so you have a sense of the content.

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A couple of years ago, the British Museum had a special exhibit on Becket. Here’s the website for the exhibit and here’s a playlist of associated videos.

And here’s an episode of a BBC series called Pilgrimage centered on the Canterbury pilgrim path. It’s quite good – charming.

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Of course, we read The Canterbury Tales in the homschool. Here’s my take – well, really quoting someone else’s take – on why everyone in the Church should read it right now.

He is the great poetic ecclesiologist of a Church marked by sin and so repentance. He is a voice for our times because he can act as a guide to living together, confessing our sins, telling our tales, and sometimes laughing on our way through the vale of tears towards Jerusalem.