The Fifth Day of Christmas: Saint Thomas Becket and His Liturgical Celebration

Happy fifth day of Christmas! Today the Church celebrates the anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket. Over the years, I’ve written many articles on this, one of my favourite saints. I’ve provided links to them below. Many of these articles focus on the saint himself, his life and martyrdom, and others on his legacy to the Church, particularly as pertains to Christian pilgrimage.

Today, however, I’m going to take a very brief dive into the liturgical celebrations of this great saint.

Once universally considered the most important martyr of the high Middle Ages, in the modern rite Saint Thomas Becket is celebrated with a memorial, and an optional one at that. Occurring, as it does, on the Fifth Day of the Octave of Christmas, there are some peculiarities.

First, some history.

Prior to the 1962 reforms, the Feast of Saint Thomas was classified as a double. This means that it outranked the Octave day on which it occurred, as the days of the Octave of Christmas were classified as semidoubles. The nomenclature for how these feasts were classified is a touch bewildering to me, but at least what outranks what was pretty clear. The propers for Saint Thomas were always prayed in the Mass of the day, and the liturgical colour was red, representing the saint’s martyrdom.

When Pope Saint John XXIII published his revision to the Missale Romanum in 1962, the methodology of ranking feasts was greatly simplified. This had some weird side effects. In the case of Saint Thomas, his feast was reduced to the rank of a Commemoration. This means that the Mass celebrated was the new Mass of the Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas, with the normal liturgical colour being white. But following each of the proper prayers in the Mass for this day, the corresponding prayers for Saint Thomas were also said.

So for example, immediately after the Collect of the Mass of the Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas the priest would then also pray the Collect of the now otherwise obsolete festal Mass of Saint Thomas, Bishop and Martyr.

In the 1969 reform of Pope Saint Paul VI, it got even weirder.

Today’s normal Mass is the Mass of the Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas. Currently, as I mentioned above, Saint Thomas Becket is celebrated with an Optional Memorial. Usually that means at the discretion of the celebrating priest, he may choose to pray the Memorial Mass rather than the Mass of the day.

So today instead of the Christmas Octave Mass, he could choose to pray the Mass of Saint Thomas Becket, Bishop and Martyr, which has its own Collect prayer. There’s even a note in the Missal that for this Mass the other Mass propers are to be taken from either the Common of Martyrs (for One Martyr) or the Common of Pastors (for a Bishop).

So it appears that the priest has the choice of celebrating the Christmas Mass or Saint Thomas, but not both. But fun fact: no.

I bring your attention to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal 355a (emphases mine):

355. On Optional Memorials,

a) On the weekdays of Advent from December 17 to December 24, on days within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord, and on the weekdays of Lent, except Ash Wednesday and during Holy Week, the Mass texts for the current liturgical day are used; but the Collect may be taken from a Memorial which happens to be inscribed in the General Calendar for that day ….

Did you catch that? The section in the Missal where it says that the other Mass propers are to be taken from either the Common of Martyrs (for One Martyr) or the Common of Pastors (for a Bishop) is completely irrelevant because this Memorial will always fall within the Octave of Christmas, meaning that the Mass celebrated will always be the Mass of the Fifth Day within the Octave of Christmas.

The priest still has an option to include Saint Thomas, but only by substituting the Collect for Saint Thomas in place of the normal Collect for the day’s Mass.

But the weirdness doesn’t stop there.

Although the General Instruction of the Roman Missal clearly states that red vestments are to worn “on celebrations of Martyr Saints”¹, this doesn’t appear to apply on this day, since other than the Collect prayer, the rest of the Mass is still a Christmas Octave Mass. And on Christmas, the liturgical colour is white.

Indeed, today’s Ordo entry gives the colour of the day as white, with absolutely no notation of any other options.

So far as I know, Saint Thomas Becket is the only martyr on whose memorial (if it is celebrated) the priest wears white. So there’s your weird liturgical fun fact of the day.

Previous articles on Saint Thomas Becket:

2021: Saint Thomas Becket, Obedience, and the Sacred Liturgy
(Obedience, freedom, and Traditionis Custodes)

2020: Saint Thomas Becket
(The saint’s treasured “little book” found at last)

2018: Becket
(On martyrdom and liberty, with some help from Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B.)

2016: On Obedience and Confusion
(Ruminations on obedience as the greatest freedom, touching on both the saint and Amoris Lætitia)

2015: On Pilgrimage
(A deeper look into pilgrimages and why we do them)

2014: A Happy Death
(Thoughts on the saint’s martyrdom and the grace of a happy death)

2012: Becket and Chaucer
(A meditation on pilgrimage)

2011: Saint Thomas Becket
(G.K. Chesterton on Becket’s martyrdom)

2010: Becket
(Becket, More, and Henry VIII (that jerk))

2009: Saint Thomas Becket
(Becket’s martrydom, an eyewitness account)

In 2013 and 2017, I failed to post anything. That’s going to happen from time to time. In 2019, his feast was trumped by the Sunday feast of the Holy Family. I encourage you to peruse the past articles and see if you can’t watch the magnificent film, Becket.

Here follows one of the film’s many memorable scenes.

O God, who gave the Martyr Saint Thomas Becket
the courage to give up his life for the sake of justice,
grant, through his intercession,
that, renouncing our life
for the sake of Christ in this world,
we may find it in heaven.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Saint Thomas Becket, pray for us.

1. General Instruction 346 b.