Feast of Saint Thomas

Today is the feast of St Thomas Aquinas.

When you are confirmed in the Church, you choose a name for yourself, the name of a saint whose path in life impresses you in some way. This saint, then, becomes part of your life after confirmation. People often turn to their patron saints, asking their intercession in various situations. Or they reflect on the lives of their patron saints and consider how their example might be applicable in their own search for holiness.

A few years back, when I was about to be confirmed in the Catholic Church, I had to decide upon a patron saint. In my big, empty condo I sat up in bed, paging through a massive binder full of pages which described hundreds of saints.

I pondered saint after saint, trying to find one with whom I especially identified. Then I came across Saint Thomas Aquinas. At the time, I'm not sure I'd ever heard of St Thomas. The description I had before me made him sound like quite an intelligent philosopher, someone who could express the faith in a logical, rational way. That impressed me, but not wanting to miss a "better" saint I proceeded to page through the rest. It took hours. But after a while, I came back to St Thomas. Something about him was attractive, so I chose him as my patron saint. Just call me "Jason Robert Thomas Signalness."

As I've studied since that time, I have come to realize what a giant Saint Thomas is in Catholic theology. He defended the faith and explained it with unmatched clarity and fullness. He lived in the 1200s, but if you look in his works, you will find answers to so many of today's "contemporary" religious problems. The man was a genius, no doubt.

Perhaps the most often repeated story about Saint Thomas explains why several of his main works were left unfinished. On the feast of St Nicholas in 1273, St Thomas went to resume his work after Mass. He abruptly stopped writing in the middle of work on the Sacrament of Penance. When a friend asked him why he had stopped writing, he answered "I can write no more. All that I have hitherto written seems to me nothing but straw." Later on he revealed, when questioned again about his work, that he had been granted some kind of private revelation by God. He said, again, "All that I have written seems to me nothing but straw ... compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me."

One of the greatest minds, a man who described the divine in a more thorough way than perhaps anyone before, was silenced by his inability to the express the reality of the supernatural. He died not long after, on his way to the Council at Lyon.

I first thought of St Thomas as an unmatched philosopher whose faith was constructed out of logic and reason, as if his belief in God were the capstone of some monumental intellectual exercise. Only later did I realize how much more complex the reality is. St Thomas stood on the shoulders of giants: Aristotle, St Paul, and countless others. He was first and foremost a man of faith. Secondarily, he was a philosopher who used his skills to defend and explain the faith that was the basis for his entire life.

This was a major conversion in my life. I went from a wanna-be philosopher (with a computer-science, need-to-understand-how-it-works brain) to a man who uses his puny mind to express his faith in a loving God whom he does not fully understand. I learned that reason can take us a long way, that faith can take us farther if we let it, and that the two can never truly disagree. Saint Thomas was my constant companion during this conversion, a conversion that was necessary for me to remain both a believer and a seminarian.

Saint Thomas, Thank you. Pray for us!