Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote on the Eucharist, but nervous of trying to address such a high mystery, he brought it to the altar and laid it there. We are told that Christ spoke from the crucifix, saying, “You have written well of Me, Thomas; what would you have of Me?”
By Chris Sparks
I loved him first for his levitation.
When I was very small, I was the fortunate recipient of several books of the lives of the saints from various family members. I read those very carefully, and then re-read them when, midway through, it suddenly struck me that these were the sorts of lives I wanted most to know had happened in the world. The miracles, especially, pointed to a consistent history of grace affecting the world dramatically, visibly.
I had always known there was something true in fairy tales and in fantasy; I now knew that miracles are the fulfillment of the promise, the holy reality of which all magic is a pale shadow, a temptation rather than a gift.
Miracles and mercy
Oh, it’s not just about the miracles. The love of God and neighbor visible on every page of the lives of the saints was deeply attractive, and clearly the source of the miracles. In fact, no saint’s life story just had miracles, even though a number of them just had works of mercy without miracle stories.
It’s pretty obvious that the works of mercy were miracles, as well. Where else in human history does one find goodness moving with such strength? The saints can successfully overcome empires and demons, can defy pagan gods and convert the most hardened of sinners, can love those least attractive, can penetrate the deepest of mysteries with graced intellect or mystical insight.
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Doctor of the Church and a patron of the Marian Congregation, is an outstanding example of that.
Achievements
A man of brilliance, St. Thomas married the best of ancient Greek philosophy to the Gospel without doing harm to the true faith of Christ and His Church. A man of deep learning, he continues to be studied to the present day, and remains an outstanding example, not just for Catholic theologians and philosophers, but for anyone who wants to use their intellect to truly, seriously pursue truth and the life of the mind.
A saint of extraordinary spiritual gifts whose brother Dominicans witnessed his levitations and ecstasies. It was a mystical experience that ended his writing some time before he died.
And yet Christ Himself famously approved of that writing.
Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote on the Eucharist, but nervous of trying to address such a high mystery, he brought it to the altar and laid it there. We are told that Christ spoke from the crucifix, saying, “You have written well of Me, Thomas; what would you have of Me?”
Thomas, wisely and lovingly, famously responded, “Only Thyself.”
God first; neighbor second
Saint Thomas Aquinas is a tremendous balance to many of the evils of the present age. He put God in first place, and then proceeded to turn his attention to the works of that Creator’s hands. A man of universal interests and endless intellectual activity, St. Thomas shows us that to love our neighbor means to know our neighbor, and that by “neighbor,” God intends to include the whole of creation outside of ourselves.
Saint Thomas’ intellectual honesty, clarity, and rigor showed that to truly love our enemies, we ought to understand them and their positions well enough to be able to present them better than our enemies can, even as we charitably, thoroughly, and accurately refute them. He helped many of us who are not such brilliant intellectual lights as he with his massive collection of writings, especially the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra Gentiles. Saint Thomas would take on any question, lay out with clarity and force the arguments for all the wrong positions, and then explain orthodoxy with brilliance.
Any question, mind you. He would take on all comers. And many of the errors he refuted are the same ones we’re confronting today. Why? Because certain errors are endlessly tempting, just as the same seven deadly sins have plagued us across the centuries.
Not dead, but living
March 7, 2024, is the 750th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest minds and mystics in Catholic history. He is a Doctor of the Church — the Angelic Doctor, yes, but also the Common or Universal Doctor, the teacher of all things. It is true that the hard sciences have developed a long way from what was available to him in his day, and yet he is not outdated.
Why? Because his method, his intellectual openness, clarity, and reason, are perennial models of how to be a Catholic using both faith and reason, rising, as St. John Paul II said in his famous encyclical Fides et Ratio, “to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
Also, as Dr. Robert Stackpole explains in Divine Mercy: A Guide from Genesis to Benedict XVI, St. Thomas Aquinas had some essential insights into Divine Mercy. When Bl. Michael Sopocko was attempting to verify St. Faustina’s extraordinary claim about Divine Mercy being God’s greatest attribute, Aquinas was among the Doctors he turned to.
Let truth shine
So as the Church marks this extraordinary anniversary, consider picking up a copy of G. K. Chesterton’s great biography of St. Thomas Aquinas, which the Thomistic scholar Etienne Gilson called the single best book on St. Thomas anyone had ever written. Pray to him, asking his intercession for yourself and the whole Marian Family. He’s a patron saint of the Congregation, after all!
Ask his intercession in this time of fake news, false advertising, misinformation, disinformation, and other sins against the intellect, that the truth shine in the darkness, and the darkness not overcome it.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
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