Thomas Aquinas: His Life’s Crescendo – Br. Curtis Almquist

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Br. Curtis Almquist

Thomas Aquinas, Friar and Theologian

The Wisdom of Solomon 7:7-14 

Thomas Aquinas, whom we remember today, personified what Jesus called a “scribe trained for the kingdom of heaven.”[i] Aquinas was born in Italy in year 1225 and died at just under 50 years old. He became a Dominican Friar, and was a scholar, theologian, philosopher, and prolific author. He had a photographic memory and mind.[ii] In 25 years, he dictated 50 folio volumes, about 50,000 pages, the equivalent of 500 short modern books. All of this was done with the quill pens of his scribes.

His most famous work, the Summa Theologica, probed the nature of God and God’s creation. Creation reflects God’s glory, God’s beauty, God’s order, God’s meaning. For Aquinas, God’s revelation was not just in the past, nor just in the present. God’s revelation is ongoing and continues into the future. So we must keep our minds open to God’s continual revelation. There is always more. And because of this, Aquinas did not see any inconsistency or disharmony between reason and revelation. God will continue to enlighten us if we will only be attentive.[iii].

How then should we live? Aquinas said, with “virtue,” which is certainly not a word in our everyday vocabulary. However “virtue” has a cogency for our own day when so much and so many are lost. How then shall we live? With virtue. What Aquinas called “Cardinal Virtues”: moral qualities we can and should develop:

• Prudence: the ability to judge what is right and to choose the right course of action;
• Justice: giving to each person what is due them; and fulfilling our own obligations;
• Fortitude: which is about courage;
• Temperance: which is to moderate our desires and pleasures.

Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance.

Aquinas also wrote extensively about “Theological Virtues,” which are not to be developed, but rather to be welcomed and received as gifts from God: the gift of Faith, the belief in God and God’s revelations on earth; the gift of Hope, which is the desire for life beyond this life, that is, eternal life; and the gift of Love, the love of God and love of our neighbor. Who is our neighbor? Everyone. God’s gifts to us all: Faith, Hope, and Love.

A few months before he died, Aquinas  had a profound mystical experience of Jesus in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. For Aquinas, it was a foretaste of heaven. He experienced the infinite glory of God which far transcended his own scholarly work about God. Aquinas stopped writing. His life’s work, his Summa Theologica, would be left unfinished. Which proved a fitting conclusion to someone so committed to God’s revelation being ongoing. There would always be more, including much more than Aquinas could ever summarize. Aquinas said about his own life’s work: “Compared to what I have now seen, everything I have written looks to me like straw.” What had he seen? God’s glory. He experienced God.

In the end Thomas Aquinas claimed his identity not as a scholar but as a child of God. Aquinas asked aloud, Do you know the delight of a child tossing a ball into the air? That delight is what God experiences whenever God looks at you, Aquinas said. In the end, Thomas Aquinas’ revered intellect was melded by his childlike experience of God’s love informing his whole being.[iv] And so for us. God’s presence, God’s desires, God’s love are present and knowable. God’s revelation will come to us through the whole of creation if we will only be attentive. Open your mind, open your eyes, open your heart to God’s real presence, now.

Blessed Thomas Aquinas, whom we remember with thanksgiving.

[i] Matthew 13:52.

[ii] Biographical detail by Peter Kreeft, A Summa of the Summa: Essential Passages of Aquinas (1990).

[iii] See Ephesians 1:15-23.

[iv] Inspiration from The Inner Eye of Love; Mysticism and Religion, by William Johnston (1978), p. 20.