What Matilda won for her darling.

In preparation for the feast

of

The Assumption of Our Lady.

The holy death of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

+

How a mother prepared for the great feasts of Our Lady.

The Martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury

29 December, 1170.

From his cradle was St Thomas à Becket taught 

to have devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

His mother, Matilda, used in her hallowed playfulness of heart, 

to put her boy, whilst he was yet a child, into a scale, 

and bestow his weight in food, clothing and money, on the poor 

that she might thereby win for her darling 

the prayers and protection of the blessed Mary.

She taught her son

devotion to the Blessed Virgin

that his life and acts would be protected by Her

Whom he fervently invoked and

held as his hope after Christ.