Mary's Castle Library

THE CATHOLIC FEAST 

28 JANUARY 

 

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS

PATRONAGE:

Catholic academies, against storm, apologists, book sellers, schools, and universities, chastity, learning,  pencil makers, philosophers, publishers, scholars, students, University of Santo Tomas, theologians, etc.

HIS LIFE PROFILE

By universal consent, Thomas Aquinas is the preeminent spokesman of the Catholic tradition of reason and of divine revelation. 

He is one of the great teachers of the medieval Catholic Church, honored with the titles Doctor of the Church and Angelic Doctor.

 

At five he was given to the Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino in his parents’ hopes that he would choose that way of life and eventually became abbot. In 1239, he was sent to Naples to complete his studies. It was here that he was first attracted to Aristotle’s philosophy.

 

By 1243, Thomas abandoned his family’s plans for him and joined the Dominicans, much to his mother’s dismay. On her order, Thomas was captured by his brother and kept at home for over a year.

 

Once free, he went to Paris and then to Cologne, where he finished his studies with Albert the Great. He held two professorships at Paris, lived at the court of Pope Urban IV, directed the Dominican schools at Rome and Viterbo, combated adversaries of the mendicants, as well as the Averroists, and argued with some Franciscans about Aristotelianism.

 

His greatest contribution to the Catholic Church is his writings. The unity, harmony and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural human knowledge, pervades his writings. One might expect Thomas, as a man of the gospel, to be an ardent defender of revealed truth. But he was broad enough, deep enough, to see the whole natural order as coming from God the Creator, and to see reason as a divine gift to be highly cherished.

 

The Summa Theologiae, his last and, unfortunately, uncompleted work, deals with the whole of Catholic theology. He stopped work on it after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why he stopped writing, he replied, “ I cannot go on…. All that 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 March 7, 1274.

 

PRAYER TO SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS

O Angelic Doctor Saint Thomas Aquinas, prince of theologians and model of philosophers, bright ornament of the Christian world and light of the Church. 

O heavenly patron of all Catholic schools, who didst learn wisdom without guile and dost communicate it without envy, intercede for us with the Son of God, Wisdom itself, that the spirit of wisdom may descend upon us, and enable us to understand clearly that which thou hast taught, and fulfill it by imitating thy deeds; to become partakers of that doctrine and virtue which caused thee to shine like the sun on earth; and at last to rejoice with thee forever in Their most sweet fruits in heaven, together praising the Divine Wisdom for all eternity. Amen. 

 

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, 

PRAY FOR US.

AMEN!