Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Saint Thomas Aquinas - To Understand God
In Summa Theologica, Thomas presents five ways and methods of getting to know God. He wrote as much as can be said about God, because he knew from personal experience of prayer that He is the unfathomable mystery of Love. That is why syllogisms and philosophical considerations are not enough to express God’s essence.
Aquinas set clear boundaries and the specificity of knowing God in a purely rational way, distinguishing it from supernatural knowledge, which is a direct sharing of the Creator with creation. When, as a child, he exclaimed: "I would like to understand God", he said it as a nascent mystic and man of the Church, and not a philosopher. As he finished his most important works, he humbly stated that everything he wrote was nothing but straw. For he knew that God is always greater!
Thomas was born in 1225 in Roccasecca Castle in the Diocese of Aquino. His family was very wealthy. As a child, he was a pious and very gifted boy. He absorbed knowledge with great diligence in the Benedictine abbey in Monte Cassino. Controlled in reactions and internally focused, he had a very early spiritual knowledge of the gentle voice of God, who called him to serve in his Church. While studying philosophy at the University of Naples, he met Dominicans and came into contact with the philosophy of Aristotle.
When in 1243, after having completed the novitiate in the Dominican order, they wanted to send Thomas to study in Bologna. His brothers tried to dissuade him from his chosen path by force. He was imprisoned by them for two years. One day they used an unworthy method and left a young woman in his room. Here, Thomas's indignation reached its zenith. Deeply shaken internally, he stayed strongly with his intention to the displeasure of his relatives, who finally had to reconcile that he would be a poor monk. In 1245, the brothers released him.
Tomas's superiors, noticing his extraordinary abilities, sent him to study in Paris, and then to Cologne, where he heard lectures by the famous philosopher and scientist, Albert the Great. The one, seeing that some of his colleagues laughed at Thomas as silent as an ox, was to say: remember that when that ox roars, all Europe will hear it! It also happened because it was heard not only by Europe, but also by the whole world. Soon after graduation, Tomas became a professor in Paris. He traveled a lot. He was not only a philosopher who brought Aristotle closer to Christians; Thomas also appreciated the importance of reason in the dynamics of getting to know God, although he also clearly saw its limits. He also drew from the rich tradition of the Fathers of the Church, especially St. Augustine, although he did not agree with him on everything.
To Thomas Aquinas, we owe the Summa Theologica, a dozen or so treatises on God, on the Church and the vocation of man, in which there is a synthesis of all Christian thought referring to God's revelation. In his theological reflection, Thomas appreciated the importance of reason and Greek philosophical thought, which was saved and passed on to Europe mainly by Muslim thinkers. To this day, we are struck by the precision of thought and the clarity of theological expressions in the works of Aquinas. It is a living thought in dialogue with the knowledge of that time. In addition to many other theological and philosophical works, also he wrote Summa Contra Gentiles, as well as a series of commentaries on various books of the Old and New Testaments. He finished the last parts of the Summa Theologica, begun in Paris, in Naples in 1272. In Lent in 1273, he preached there, commenting on the Creed, Our Father and the Ten Commandments. He died on March 7, 1274, in the Fossanova Abbey, on his way to the council in Lyons.
Thomas was above all a praying monk, a man who encountered God in the Church and in all creation, constantly sustained by God in existence. And although he wrote treatises on the Holy Trinity and the Eucharist, in the spontaneous prayer of a child, in the simplicity of the evangelical sentences and in the act of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, he discovered the depth of the Catholic faith, which is above all the grace and inexhaustible wisdom of God, born of the Cross of Christ.
The renaissance of Aquinas' thought took place in the nineteenth century, when the Pope encouraged the entire Church to learn about Thomistic philosophy and theology. This is how neotomism was born. Saint John Paul II also greatly appreciated the thought of St. Thomas, as mentioned in the encyclical Fides et ratio (n. 43-46).
One day, after accepting the Lord Jesus into his heart, Thomas wrote a prayer that expresses the depth of his faith: “I give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, who have been pleased to nourish me, a sinner and your unworthy servant, with the precious Body and Bloodof your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: this through no merits of mine, but due solely to the graciousness of your mercy”.
As I read in one of the many studies on Saint Thomas, that on December 6, 1273, the Dominican was still in the process of working on the Theological Sum. However, since celebrating the morning Mass, despite repeated exhortations, he has never picked up his pen again. He only revealed what had happened during the Mass to Reginald, his secretary and his closest friend. The story did not come out until thirty years later, shortly before Reginald's death. Well, while celebrating the memorable Mass, Thomas confided to Reginald, he had a vision of Christ crucified, who spoke to him with the words: "You have written well about me, Thomas. What would you like to ask of me?" There could only be one answer: "Nothing but you, Lord." As Thomas explained, compared to what he saw and understood in this experience, all his works seemed to be of no more value than straw. From then on, he was no longer able to create theological works.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george