Today, January 28th, the Catholic Church celebrates the memory of St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church. His theological studies earned him the title “Angelic Doctor”.
Newsroom (31/01/2022, Gaudium Press) It was the year 1248. The city of Cologne was in celebration. The religious and civil authorities, as well as the pious people, had gathered to lay the cornerstone of what was to become the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. And in the midst of the numerous clergy, there were also two friars in white robes and black robes who had just arrived from France.
The older one was called Albert, nicknamed “Magnus”. He was the wisest man of his time and the greatest theological authority of the century. The mere fact that the phrase “Albertus dixit” [1] was uttered in academic circles was often enough to end a doctrinal discussion.
Little was known about the younger friar, except that he was a disciple of Albert. If it weren’t for his tall stature and large body, which made him stand out from the others, he would have been almost unnoticed in the crowd.
However, under that habit of the mendicant order of Saint Dominic, there was hidden a member of the highest Italian nobility. He was closely related to two emperors of the Holy Roman German Empire, Frederick II and Conrad VI. However, what brought him out of that apparent anonymity was not his lofty bearing, nor even his high nobility, but his virtue and intelligence. This young friar became a great saint and one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen born. His name was Thomas Aquinas.
Indeed, the reason that brought him to Cologne was known to many. He was there to assist his master in founding a Studium Generale, which was to become the center of theological studies of his order in Germany. But what no one knew, perhaps not even he himself, was that in the next twenty-five years, Thomas would also build a magnificent temple, as solid and lasting as the foundations of the church in Cologne that he saw being laid. Thomas would build a monument of doctrine, founded on faith and reason. Such a monument could well be called “the cathedral of Christian thought”…
The Little Monk of Monte Cassino
The world saw him born in the year 1225, in the castle of Roccasecca, near Naples, Italy. Of the seven children of Count Landolfo d’Aquino, Thomas was the youngest. At the age of five, he was sent to the famous Convent of Monte Cassino, to be educated there. His uncle, Sunibaldo, was abbot and took charge of his education. Everything indicates that his family also longed for him to become the superior of that prestigious monastery.
Little is known about this period of his life, except that the “little monk”, as he walked through the majestic cloister of the abbey, would ask the religious about a subject that never left his mind: “What is God? The answers he gave have not gone down in history. However, it seems safe to say that no one gave him a satisfactory answer, because, since he was a child, he made this first question the driving force that would propel him to produce the greatest theological work of all times.
Upon entering academic life, he quickly stood out for the prodigious fecundity of his thought. This doctor, who deserved to be called “Angelic”, was a great lamp placed by God in the midst of his Church, in order to enlighten, comfort and encourage souls for centuries to come. He lived only 49 years, devoting half of his life to the noble and arduous task of teaching in the most important university centers in France, Italy and Germany.
William of Tocco, his first and main biographer, stated that “in class, his genius began to shine so brightly, and his intelligence to reveal itself so perspicaciously, that he repeated to the other students the lessons of the masters more elevated, clearer, and deeper than he had heard them” [2].
St. Thomas knew how to harmoniously unite holiness with genius, and erudition with virtue, in order to produce the greatest theological work of all times. During the almost eight centuries that separate his existence from ours, he was always eloquently praised by the Popes, in terms not commonly used in pontifical documents.
Pope John XXII, in 1318, stated: “He alone enlightened the Church more than the other doctors. By reading his books a man gains more in one year than during his whole life.”[3]
St. Pius V, in 1567, was no less categorical: “The Church has made it her theological doctrine, because it is the most certain and most certain of all.
And Pope Leo XIII, in 1892, said that “if doctors are found who disagree with St. Thomas, whatever their merit, hesitation is not permitted; let the former be sacrificed to the latter.”
For its part, the Second Vatican Council advises that St. Thomas be followed in Catholic seminaries and universities. Pope Paul VI, commenting on this fact, said: “this is the first time that an Ecumenical Council recommends a theologian, and this is precisely St. Thomas Aquinas.
Benedict XVI’s three catecheses on St. Thomas Aquinas
Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI has once again stressed the importance of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas for the contemporary world.
The Supreme Pontiff dedicated three of his weekly audiences to the life, work and thought of the Angelic Doctor.
In his catechesis of June 2, 2010, the Pope recalled the words of John Paul II in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, where he states that Angelicus “was always proposed by the Church as a teacher of thought and a model of the right way to do theology. The Pontiff argues that we should not be surprised that, after St. Augustine, among the ecclesiastical writers mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, St. Thomas is mentioned more than all the others. He then presents some traces of the Aquinas’ life, highlighting the Angelic’s providential encounter with Aristotle’s thought.
In fact, in the 13th century several works of the Stagyricus were translated into Latin that until then were completely unknown in the Christian West. This aroused in academic circles not only admiration, but also awe. The reason was that many of Aristotle’s teachings seemed to be at odds with revealed doctrine. St. Thomas then devoted himself to commenting on Aristotle’s main works, trying to distinguish in his writings what was valid from what was doubtful.
There was a question that puzzled many theologians of his time: could Christian thought receive any contribution from pagan philosophy? St. Thomas answered: “All truth, spoken by whoever it may be, comes from the Holy Spirit. For St. Thomas, the encounter with a philosophy that was prior to Christianity itself was not exactly an obstacle to revelation, but rather, it opened a new perspective on the horizon of faith.
Let us look at the Pontiff’s words: “Aristotelian philosophy was obviously a philosophy elaborated without knowledge of the Old and New Testaments, an explanation of the world without revelation, by reason alone. And this consequent rationality was convincing (…). There was a complete and convincing ‘philosophy’ in itself, a rationality preceding faith, and then ‘theology’, a thinking with faith and in faith.
The urgent question was this: are the world of rationality, philosophy thought without Christ, and the world of faith compatible? Or are they mutually exclusive?
There was no lack of elements that affirmed the incompatibility between the two worlds, but St. Thomas was firmly convinced of their compatibility; moreover, philosophy elaborated without the knowledge of Christ practically awaited the light of Jesus to be completed.
This was St. Thomas’ great ‘surprise’, which determined his path as a thinker. To show this independence of philosophy and theology, and at the same time their reciprocal relationality, was the historical mission of the great master. In summary, the Pope explains that in that moment of mismatch between two cultures, it seemed that “faith had to surrender before reason.
However, St. Thomas demonstrated that faith and reason go hand in hand, and that there is no contradiction between the data of revelation and that acquired through rational knowledge. In this way, faith and reason “constitute as it were the two wings by which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.
Thus, according to the Pontiff, the Aquinas created “a new synthesis, which came to form the culture of the following centuries.
The power of attraction of St. Thomas Aquinas
Another point emphasized by Benedict XVI was the great attraction that St. Thomas had for those who knew him: “One of his former pupils declared that a huge crowd of students followed his courses, to such an extent that the classrooms had difficulty containing them, and, with a personal note, he added that ‘listening to him was for him a deep happiness’. St. Thomas “lived the life of a teacher and with all the devotion of which he was capable.
10] In the Summa Contra Gentiles we find a discrete indication of what he considered to be the main task of his life, making his own the words of St. Hilary: “I am aware that the main duty of my life towards God is to strive so that my words and all my senses speak of him. That perfect union that existed in Angelic between the life of prayer and the life of study was the secret of his holiness.
Besides being a great teacher and writer, St. Thomas also devoted himself to public preaching. Some of these homilies have passed into history and have come down to us. In his sermons, he knew how to explain the most intricate theological problems in a language accessible to people of little learning.
The Pope truly considers it a great grace: “when theologians know how to speak with simplicity and fervor to the faithful. On the other hand, the ministry of preaching helps the theological scholars themselves to have a healthy pastoral realism, and enriches their research with intense stimuli.”[12]
The Eucharistic Devotion of St. Thomas Aquinas
But how was it possible, in only 25 years of teaching, in a time when there was no press, when libraries were small and difficult to access, to produce such a great bibliography? St. Thomas himself gives us the answer. He himself confided to Reginaldo, his confessor, that he learned more in his meditations in church before the Blessed Sacrament, or in the cell at the foot of the Crucifix, than in all the books he had read. William of Tocco insists that “every time he wanted to study, to begin a dispute, to teach, to write or to dictate, he would first withdraw into the secret of prayer and pray while shedding tears, in order to obtain an understanding of the divine mysteries. St. Thomas: ‘gave himself wholly to things above, and was contemplative in an entirely admirable way.
At night, after a brief sleep, Thomas would prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament, where he remained a long time in prayer. When the Matins were played, before the religious formed a line to go to choir, he would secretly return to his cell so that no one would notice him.
Thus, it was in the life of piety that St. Thomas acquired the highest knowledge, understood the sacred texts, and found the solution to the most complicated theological problems.
The Pontiff also argues that in St. Thomas’ life we find that which is one of the main characteristics of chosen souls, namely, devotion to Our Lady. “He defined it with a wonderful nickname: Triclinium totius Trinitatis, triclinium, that is, place where the Trinity finds its rest because, by virtue of the Incarnation, in no creature, as in her, do the three divine Persons dwell and feel the delight and joy for living in her soul full of Grace. Through her intercession, we can obtain every help.
The celebration of the Holy Eucharist was St. Thomas’ favorite devotion. He celebrated it every day at the first hour of the morning and, even before taking off his priestly vestments, he attended one or two Masses. As for religious duties, he scrupulously followed the prayers of the community, without using the legitimate dispensations to which he was entitled because of his function as a teacher. As he grew older, the number of his prayers and meditations increased even more.
This is how we can better understand the effectiveness of St. Thomas’ teaching, because, according to Grabmann: “the scientific figure of St. Thomas cannot be separated from the ethical-religious greatness of his soul; in Thomas, one cannot understand the seeker of truth without the saint” [15].
“Master Thomas, what lesson can you give us?”
Benedict XVI also recalls that one morning while St. Thomas was praying in the chapel of St. Nicholas in Naples, a sexton named Dominic of Caserta overheard a dialogue. The Angelicus was asking, worried, if what he had written about the mysteries of faith was correct. It is then that he hears a voice coming from the crucifix:
– “You spoke well of me, Thomas, what will be your reward?
– “Nothing but You, Lord.
And as the end of his pilgrimage on this earth approached, the Angelic asked for the Sacraments and received them with great fervor. At this moment, he further affirmed his absolute faith in the presence of God in the Eucharist: “I receive you, the price of my soul’s redemption, I receive you, the viaticum of my pilgrimage, for whose love I have studied, held vigils, suffered; I have preached you, I have taught you; I have never said anything against you, and if I did it was out of ignorance, and I do not insist on my error; if I have taught badly about this sacrament or others, I submit it to the judgment of the holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I now leave this life.”[16]
Three days later, on March 7, 1274, at dawn, he is anointed. He responds to each of the holy anointings. A few moments later he expires: “His soul is as pure as it came. Thomas doesn’t leave, he returns. The One from whom he was never, in the end, separated, awaits him…”[17 [17].
On the occasion of the seventh centenary of the death of the Angelicus, Pope Paul VI addressed Fossanova and stated there that, even in the present time in which we live, we still have much to learn from St. Thomas. This Pontiff asked, “Master Thomas, what lesson can you give us?” Then he answered with these words: “Confidence in the truth of Catholic religious thought, as defended by him, exposed and open to the cognitive capacity of the human mind. And on this same day, in the city of Aquinas, still referring to St. Thomas, he concluded by saying, “All of us who are children of the Church can and should, at least to some extent, be his disciples!” [19].
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Notes:
1 Guillelmus de Tocco: Storia Sancti Thome de Aquino, ed. C. Le Brun Gouanvic, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1996.
2 Guillelmus de Tocco: Storia Sancti Thome de Aquino, ed. C. Le Brun Gouanvic, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1996.
3 The quotations mentioned in this paragraph are found in the work: Odilon, Moura. Preface to the Exposition on the Creed. In: Thomas Aquinas. Exposition on the Creed. 4th ed. São Paulo: Loyola, 1981, p. 11-16.
4 The three catecheses of Benedict XVI on St. Thomas were delivered in St. Peter’s Square on June 2, 16 and 23, 2010.
5 John Paul II. Encyclical letter Fides et Ratio: on the relationship between faith and reason, Paulus, São Paulo, 1998, n. 43.
6 Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: I-II, q. 109, a. 1, ad 1: “Omne verum, a quocumque dicatur, a Spiritu Santo est”.
7 Benedict XVI, General Audience, St. Peter’s Square. Wednesday, 16 June 2010.
8 John Paul II. Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio: On the Relationship between Faith and Reason, Paulus, São Paulo, 1998.
9 Benedict XVI, General Audience, St. Peter’s Square. Wednesday, 02 Jun. 2010.
10 Pieper, Josef. Introduction to Thomas Aquinas. Sweet Lecciones. Rialp, Madrid, 2005.
11 Aquinas, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra los Gentiles, BAC, Madrid, 2007, p. 40.
12 Benedict XVI, General Audience, St. Peter’s Square. Wednesday, 02 Jun. 2010.
13 Guillelmus de Tocco: Storia Sancti Thome de Aquino, ed. C. Le Brun Gouanvic, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1996.
14 Benedict XVI, General Audience, St. Peter’s Square. Wednesday, 23 Jun. 2010.
15 In Ameal, João. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Initiation to the study of his figure and his work. 3A ed. 3A ed. Tavares Martins: Porto, 1947, p. 130.
16 Idem, p. 154.
17 Ibidem.
18 Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, XII [1974], p. 833-834.
19 Ibidem, p. 836.
