The Just One Shall Live By Faith.

Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas,
priest and doctor of the Church
Reading I
Hebrews 10:32-39
Remember the days past when,
after you had been enlightened,
you endured a great contest of suffering.
At times you were publicly exposed
to abuse and affliction;
at other times you associated yourselves
with those so treated.
You even joined in the sufferings
of those in prison
and joyfully accepted
the confiscation of your property,
knowing that you had
a better and lasting possession.
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence;
it will have great recompense.
You need endurance
to do the will of God
and receive what he has promised.

For, after just a brief moment,
he who is to come shall come;
he shall not delay.
But my just one shall live by faith,
and if he draws back
I take no pleasure in him.

We are not among those
who draw back and perish,
but among those who have faith
and will possess life.
+++    +++    +++    +++
Responsorial
Psalm 37
R. The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
Trust in the LORD and do good,
that you may dwell in the land
and be fed in security.
Take delight in the LORD,
and he will grant you your heart’s requests.
R. The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
Commit to the LORD your way;
trust in him, and he will act.
He will make justice dawn
for you like the light;
bright as the noonday
shall be your vindication.
R. The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
By the LORD are the steps of a man made firm,
and he approves his way.
Though he fall, he does not lie prostrate,
for the hand of the LORD sustains him.
R. The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
The salvation of the just is from the LORD;
he is their refuge in time of distress.
And the LORD helps them
and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked
and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
R. The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.
+++    +++    +++    +++
Gospel
Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said to the crowds:
“This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear,
then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe,
he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.”

He said,
“To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that,
when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up
and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky
can dwell in its shade.”

With many such parables
he spoke the word to them
as they were able to understand it.
Without parables he did not speak to them,
but to his own disciples
he explained everything in private.
========================
St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274)

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.

Comment:
We can look to Thomas Aquinas as a towering example of Catholicism in the sense of broadness, universality and inclusiveness. We should be determined anew to exercise the divine gift of reason in us, our power to know, learn and understand. At the same time we should thank God for the gift of his revelation, especially in Jesus Christ.

Quote:
“Hence we must say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act. But he does not need a new light added to his natural light, in order to know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpasses his natural knowledge” (Summa Theologiae, I-II, 109, 1).

Patron Saint of:
Catholic schools
Colleges
Schools
Students

Saint of the Day
American Catholic.org