Murder_in_the_Cathedral

FAITH TOWARD GOD Religion is the most important concept in the human’s spiritual life for centuries. It’s tied into the culture, the family and the heritage through which we form an identify within our society. Any single person must have a true faith toward the Creator, live in His mind and follow the law of God. If not so, we lose the value of our humanism, we do not know where we come from and where is the end, a doomed society has no enlightener. As seen in Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas Becket have moved forward to perfection, spiritual maturity, and completeness to know God. We learn from his sacrifice how to live in obedience to God and how to keep the law, which are prerequisites to the true living faith. Becket, during his life time, would be friends of kings and commoners alike, but always at the centre of his heart, was his faith. Thomas Becket is a man who is not terrified of taking action, satisfied with the results of his accomplishment even it brings him a unanticipated outcome. He is a man who braves of revealing himself. Since he sees that the path chosen for him by God is clear, he does not hesitate with his arrival in Canterbury and refusal to concede to King Henry’s demands. Becket even sees himself faced with a task that can only culminate in his death. He will die, but there’ nothing to fear, this knowledge causes him no great suffering of mind. Thomas’s determination to serve God prevents him from seeking asylum in a world governed by human law: “End will be simple, sudden, God-given. Meanwhile the substance of our first act will be shadows, and the strife with shadow. All things prepare the event.” His faith in the divine will is asserted. He believes that all things is following the mind of God, for all the things that he has done and he will do, is for God and God alone. The King rules the country, has the highest power, but to Thomas, the only reality is that of God's will, all else is the vanity of temporal power and “toiling in the household.” Thomas is visited by four Tempters, symbolic characters who attempt to lure Thomas away from his devotion to the Church. The First, Second, and Third Tempters are easily spurned by Thomas He knows that their promises of temporal power and comfort are “puny” when compared to those offered by God. For he “has good cause to trust none, but God alone,” and refutes all of their enticements with assertions of his faith in God’s will by saying “ Shall I, who keep the keys of heaven and hell, supreme alone in England, who bind and loose, with power from the Pope, descend to desire a punier power'” His actions are processes of denial and self-examination that a martyr must undergo if he is to remain true to his calling. He proclaims, “ temporal power, to build a good world, to keep order, as the world knows order. Those who put their faith in worldly order not controlled by the order of God, in confident ignorance, but arrest disorder.” The Fourth Tempter, however, challenges Thomas on a much different and difficult level, his potential bewitching of the future martyr. This Tempter advises Thomas to “fare forward to the end,” to “think of glory after death,” and to “ think of pilgrims, standing in line before the glittering jeweled shrine.” As the Tempter announces, without martyrdom, Thomas will be only a footnote to future scholars who “ will only try to find the historical fact.” This causes a shake in Thomas, for the Tempter just offers an act of “sinful pride” that cause Becket to experience a crisis of conscience in him: “ Who are you, tempting me with my own desires'” For allowing himself to be martyred is the “right thing” to do, but he does not do so because he desires fame and retribution. The “wrong reason” which the Archbishop will allow himself to be martyred in only if it is the will of God, not his own pride to presume that he can approach to God. “The true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.” Thomas considers his own martyrdom as his possible fate to be the true man of God. When this time does come, however, he will “no longer act or suffer, to the sword’s end,” obeying temporal commands and threats, but will instead “act and suffer” to obey the will of God. He has already completed a grueling process by which he has prepared himself for martyrdom, believing that “For my Lord I am ready to die,” and “That His Church may have peace and liberty.” The moment that Becket is killed, the Chorus laments the curse being placed on their land and their lives, “ Clean the air! Clean the sky! Wash the wind!” the women “know that action is suffering” and will allow God’s will to work through them. They find solace in the presence of a being that many moderns may be missing. The time has come and the end is at hand. For the Chorus has been served by its Archbishop, regardless of the motives he may have had. “We now acknowledge our trespass, our weakness, our fault; we acknowledge that the sin of the world is upon our heads; that the blood of the martyrs and the agony of the saints is upon our mind.” Christ’s peace is “not as the world gives” but as spiritual solace.