The saints

Saint Thomas Aquinas

Doctor of the Church · Feast day January 28 · 1225 to 1274 · Italy and Paris · Also known as Thomas of Aquino, the Angelic Doctor, the Dumb Ox

Saint Thomas Aquinas was the greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, a Dominican friar whose vast, ordered writings, above all the Summa Theologica, still shape Christian thought. Yet this master of the mind was also a man of deep prayer, who near the end called all his learning straw compared to what God had shown him.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)

The dumb ox

Thomas was born to a noble family in a castle near Aquino in southern Italy, and his family expected him to rise to power in the church as a great abbot. Instead he chose the new and humble order of preaching friars, the Dominicans, who begged their bread. His family was so appalled that his brothers kidnapped him and held him prisoner for a year to change his mind. He would not.

Quiet and heavyset, he was mocked by his fellow students as the dumb ox, until his teacher, the great Albert, heard him reason and declared, We call this man a dumb ox, but he will one day fill the whole world with his bellowing. So he did.

Faith seeking understanding

Thomas gave his life to the conviction that faith and reason are not enemies but friends, both gifts of the one God, for all truth belongs to him. In an age rediscovering the philosophy of Aristotle, many feared it as a threat to the faith; Thomas showed instead how reason rightly used leads the mind toward God and serves the truth revealed in Christ.

He taught at Paris and across Italy, and wrote at an astonishing pace, dictating to several secretaries at once. His genius was not only depth but order: he could gather every question, every objection, and every answer into a vast and luminous structure, always fair to those he disagreed with, always seeking the truth rather than the victory.

The Summa Theologica

His masterwork, the Summa Theologica, was written to lay out the whole of Christian teaching clearly for students: who God is, how we come from him and return to him, the life of grace and virtue, and above all Christ, the way by which we come to God. For seven centuries it has been a foundation of Catholic theology and a treasure for the whole church.

Thomas also wrote hymns for the feast of Corpus Christi that are still sung, and prayers of great beauty, for he insisted that theology must end in worship. He would begin his work by praying before the crucifix, and once heard the Lord say, Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward wilt thou have. He answered, Nothing but thyself, Lord.

Straw

Near the end of his life, while celebrating Mass, Thomas had an experience of God so overwhelming that he laid down his pen and would write no more. When urged to finish the Summa, he answered, I cannot, for all that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me. The greatest mind of the age had come to the end of what the mind can reach, and found only the living God.

He died a few months later, in 1274, on his way to a church council, still a young man of forty-nine. His last work had been an exposition of the Song of Songs for the monks who cared for him, on the love between Christ and the soul.

Why Thomas still matters

Thomas Aquinas is the patron of students and scholars and the model of the Christian mind: rigorous, humble, and always at the service of God. He teaches that thinking hard about the faith is itself a form of love, and that all our learning, however great, is only straw beside the joy of knowing God himself, which is the reward the saints receive.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Patron saint of students · Saint Augustine · Saints for January 28 · Saint of the day