28 January 2019
Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Thomas Aquinas never finished his Summa Theologiae: one day, he just stopped dictating, and when pressed to continue, he responded, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” His devoted confrères were not dissuaded, and after Thomas’ death, they completed Thomas’ SummaTheologiae with texts that Thomas had previously composed for other Summas.
Thomas’s brilliant work has nourished western theological reflection for centuries, but as great and as useful as Thomas’ work is, we should not discount Thomas’s own repeated insistence at the end of his life that his work is but straw compared to what God reveals. It may be wonderful straw, very useful for making the bricks of our theology, but it remains but straw. Thomas himself intends to point always to the fullness of revelation who is Jesus Christ himself. Indeed, our theologies are, at best, at the service of the One who, as we hear in the letter to the Hebrews, “did not enter into a sanctuary made by hands, a copy of the true one, but heaven itself, that he might now appear before God on our behalf” (Heb 9:24).
The greatness of Thomas’s work can be fruitfully accompanied by the smallness of another doctor of the church, Thérèse of Lisieux. In the face of those she considered to be great saints, such as Teresa of Avila, Thérèse sought nothing more than to follow Jesus in her little way. She has a delightful interpretation of today’s gospel, Mark 3:22-30, in which she says that the strong man that has taken over our house is the evil one, and her job is to open a window and let the divine thief, Jesus, into her heart so that the thief can tie the strong man. As different as this precious interpretation may be from the way we sometimes triumphantly present the works of our greatest theologians, the same simplicity can be found in the best work of Thomas and other holy thinkers. What they want to do is let Jesus into their thought, to tie up their (and our) complication, so that the saving love of Savior may reign in our intellect, in our heart, in every aspect of our human existence.