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<![endif]>Today is the feast day of Thomas Aquinas. He’s the patron saint of students, theologians, philosophers, book sellers, and pencil makers. See the end of the bulletin for more about this Doctor of the Church.
<![endif]>Today is the feast day of Thomas Aquinas. He’s the patron saint of students, theologians, philosophers, book sellers, and pencil makers. See the end of the bulletin for more about this Doctor of the Church.
“Just as it is better to illuminate than merely to shine, so to pass on what one has contemplated is better than merely to contemplate.”
Thomas Aquinas: January 28
Thomas is the patron saint of Catholic schools, universities and colleges, of philosophers and theologians, of booksellers, and I would argue, of everyone who insist on doing something different with their lives than what their parents want them to do!
He was born in Italy in 1225 to an affluent family. They wanted him to become a Benedictine monk and sent him off to the monastery founded by St. Benedict himself. They hoped he would rise to abbot, which was a pretty reputable thing and a very honorable career. He horrified his parents by deciding to become a Dominican instead—NOT very reputable at the time because they were mendicant, “beggars” (like the Franciscans—think of raggedy Francis hanging out with the birds). So they locked him up in a castle for a year. But he was stubborn and won out in the end.
As a university student he never had much to say in class, so his classmates gave him the un-endearing nickname of “The Dumb Ox” (apparently he was a bit on the large side too—see the picture above). But his mentor professor knew better; (St.) Albert (the Great) predicted that Thomas’ “lowing” would be heard all over the world. True enough—Thomas was a genius and one of the most influential theologians Christianity has known.
Thomas was a theological rebel and very controversial in his day. He rejected the methodology of his time that relied heavily on appeals to authority. His approach involved taking conflicting points of view and bringing them into conversation in order to reach the truth. And he wasn’t afraid of reaching outside the Church for inspiration—he adapted (pagan) Aristotelian philosophical concepts to Christian theology, for which he was roundly condemned for many years. But he believed that reason and revelation were related, that all truth, no matter its origins, flowed from the Holy Spirit, and that all of theology was interlocking. This resulted in his massive (and never completed) Summa Theologica.
The Summa was never completed because he suddenly quit working on it one day. He had some kind of experience at mass one evening and never worked on it again, saying only that “all I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.” He died about four months later, aged only 49.
Thomas became THE theologian for the Church, which, ironically, abandoned his method when it adopted his works. That is, the Summa became THE textbook for the Church, the source of answers to all questions, the box in which all theological solutions were to be found—rather than dialoguing with philosophy, science, and even ‘paganism’ in the search for Truth—all the way up till the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s! Thomas (and Thomism) continue to be important and active parts of our theological explorations, but we have re-embraced his wide-ranging search for Truth, and the intellectual humility that recognizes that in the end, all we know is ‘straw’ compared to the things we will see and know when we are fully reunited with God.
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Karen Soos
Associate Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister
Davidson College
Campus Box 7196
Davidson NC 28035
704. 894. 2423
Associate Chaplain and Catholic Campus Minister
Davidson College
Campus Box 7196
Davidson NC 28035
704. 894. 2423
