I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain - Saint Thomas Aquinas
Have you ever had it happen that you keep coming across something over and over again that you finally decide you have to take a closer look? That has happened to me recently with Saint Thomas Aquinas—everywhere I turned there he was. So when I bought the book on Divine Mercy over Easter break, to do some preparation for the upcoming Year of Mercy, and saw after getting home there was a chapter on Thomas Aquinas, I decided it was time to take a closer look than the quick bios the various Saint books on my shelf provide.
Taking a closer look at Aquinas is not without some problems for me. My love of God may be strong, my academic abilities are not. Though I am still convinced Trent actually read Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae before answering the Question of the Week back in January, I know I am not going to be tackling something so challenging. What I did do—rather than dive into the Summa itself (I do have it book marked on my laptop to refer to as needed)—was to pick up a book about Thomas Aquinas, keeping the words of the Angelic Doctor in mind: The study of truth requires a considerable effort—which is why few are willing to undertake it out of love of knowledge—despite the fact that God has implanted a natural appetite for such knowledge in the minds of men.
In the introduction to the book I bought A.G. Sertillanges, O.P. summed up Aquinas saying, “This man satisfies the two great ideals that we seek with almost equal zeal: the ideal of intelligence and the ideal of holiness.” The brilliance of Aquinas is cited often, and it was certainly that side of him that I came across in the various works I’ve read in the past months, but it’s his humble holiness that has had the greater appeal to me. I would like to leave us today with an appreciation of this other side of Aquinas. His intelligence can a bit daunting to some of us non-academic types and we may be tempted to gloss over his works missing out on what the riches of his life lived for God has to teach us—a life lived for God is a life filled with love and joy. And a life lived for God, a life lived with love is something we are all striving to attain and something within the reach of all of us no matter our intellectual strengths or weaknesses. Saint Thomas Aquinas can help open our hearts to simply love God, for he said, “to love God is something greater than to know him.” To do this I’m going to let him speak for himself through his beautiful poetry he wrote for the Feast of Corpus Christi—a new feast of his day instituted in 1246. I will do the first four verses of the Pange Lingua and leave off before the Tantum Ergo verse begins so you can savor these other verses which may not be as familiar:
Sing, my tongue, the Saviour’s glory,
Of his flesh the mystery sing,
Of the blood, all price exceeding,
Shed by our immortal King;
Destined for the world’s redemption,
From a noble womb to spring.
Of a pure and spotless Virgin
Born for us on earth below,
He, as man with man conversing,
Stayed, the seeds of truth to sow;
Then he closed in solemn order
Wondrously his life of woe.
On the night of that last supper,
Seated with his chosen band,
He, the paschal victim eating,
First fulfills the law’s command;
Then as food to all his brethren,
Gives himself with his own hand.
Word made flesh, the bread of nature
By his word to flesh he turns;
Wine into his blood he changes:
What though sense no change discerns?
Only be the heart in earnest,
Faith her lesson quickly learns.
I have this Word on Fire link below because Father Barron, himself quite brilliant, and who can comfortably tackle the intellectual side of Saint Thomas Aquinas, enthusiastically shows another side of Aquinas which fit nicely with the direction of this reflection.