SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS, PRIEST AND CONFESSOR (Feria V Of Lent III)

Month of Saint Joseph.

The Roman Breviary has this to say--

That splendid adornment of the Christian world and light of the Church, blessed Thomas of Aquino, was the son of Landulph, Earl of Aquino, and Theodora of Naples, his wife, being nobly descended on both sides. (He was born in the year of salvation 1224,) and even as an infant gave token of the love which he afterwards bore to the Mother of God. He found a little bit of paper upon which was written the Angelic Salutation, and held it firm in his hand in spite of the efforts of his wet-nurse; his mother took it away by force, but he cried and stretched out for it, and when she gave it back to him, he swallowed it. When he was only four years old, he was given into the keeping of the Benedictine monks of Monte Cassino. He was thence sent to Naples to study, and there, while very young, entered the Order of Friars Preachers (Dominicans). This displeased his mother and brothers, and he left Naples for Paris. When he was on his journey his brothers met him, and carried him off by force to the castle of Monte San Giovanni, where they imprisoned him in the keep. Here they used every means to break him of his intention, and at last brought a loose woman into his room to try to overcome his purity. The lad drove her out with a fire-brand. When he was alone he knelt down before the figure of the Cross, and there he fell asleep. As he slept, it seemed to him that Angels came and girded his loins and from this time he never felt the least sexual inclination. His sisters came to the castle to beseech him to give up his purpose of leaving the world, but he so worked on them by his godly exhortations, that both of them ever after set no value on earthly things, and busied themselves rather with heavenly. Being let down from a window, Thomas escaped out of the castle of Monte San Giovanni, and returned to Naples. Thence he went first to Rome, and then to Paris, in company of Brother John the German, then Master-General of the Friars Preachers. At Paris he studied Philosophy and Theology under Albert the Great Doctor. At the age of twenty-five years he took the degree of Master, and gave public disquisitions on the Philosophers and Theologians with great distinction. He never set himself to read or write till he had first prayed, and when he was about to take in hand a hard passage of the Holy Scriptures, he fasted also. Hence he was wont to say to Brother Reginald his comrade, that whatever he knew, he had learnt, not so much from his own labour and study, as from the inspiration of God. At Naples he was once kneeling in very earnest prayer before an image of Christ Crucified, when he heard a voice which said Thomas, thou hast written well of Me what reward wilt thou that I give thee? He answered: "Nothing else, O Lord, other than Thy very self." He studied most carefully the works of the Fathers, and there was no kind of author in which he was not well read. His own writings are so wonderful, both because of their number, their variety, and the clearness of his explanations of hard things, that his rich and pure teaching, marvellously consonant with revealed truth, is an admirable antidote for the errors of all times. The Supreme Pontiff Urban IV. sent for him to Rome, and at his command he composed the Church Office for the feast of Corpus Christi. The Pope could not persuade him to accept any dignity. Pope Clement IV. also offered him the Archbishopric of Naples, but he refused it. He did not neglect the preaching of the Word of God. Once while he was giving a course of sermons in the Basilica of St Peter, during the octave of Easter, a woman who had an issue of blood was healed by touching the hem of his garment. He was sent by blessed Gregory X. to the Council of Lyons, but fell sick on his way to the Abbey of Fossa Nuovo, and there during his illness he made an exposition of the Song of Songs. There he died on the 7th day of March, in the year of salvation 1274, aged fifty years. He was distinguished for miracles even after his death, and on proof of these Pope John XXII. added his name to those of the Saints in the year 1323. His body was afterwards carried to Toulouse by command of blessed Urban V. He has been compared to an angel, both on account of his innocency and of his intellectual power, and has hence been deservedly termed the Angelic Doctor. The use of which title as applied to him was approved by the authority of holy Pius V. Leo XIII. cheerfully agreeing to the prayers and wishes of nearly all the bishops of the Catholic world, and in conformity with a vote of the Congregation of Sacred Rites, by his Apostolic letters declared and recognized Thomas of Aquino as the patron in heaven of all Catholic schools, as an antidote to the plague of so many false systems, especially of philosophy, for the increase of scientific knowledge, and for the common good of all mankind.

And, Father Butler writes--

ST. THOMAS was born of noble parents at Aquino in Italy, in 1224. At the age of nineteen he received the Dominican habit at Naples, where he was studying. Seized by his brothers on his way to Paris, he suffered a two years’ captivity in their castle of Rocca-Secca; but neither the caresses of his mother and sisters, nor the threats and stratagems of his brothers, could shake him in his vocation. While St. Thomas was in confinement at Rocca-Secca, his brothers endeavored to entrap him into sin, but the attempt only ended in the triumph of his purity. Snatching from the hearth a burning brand, the Saint drove from his chamber the wretched creature whom they had there concealed. Then marking a cross upon the wall, he knelt down to pray, and forthwith, being rapt in ecstasy, an angel girded him with a cord, in token of the gift of perpetual chastity which God had given him. The pain caused by the girdle was so sharp that St. Thomas uttered a piercing cry, which brought his guards into the room. But he never told this grace to any one save only to Father Reginald, his confessor, a little while before his death. Hence originated the Confraternity of the “Angelic Warfare,” for the preservation of the virtue of chastity. ... He died at a monastery in Fossa-Nuova, AD 1274, on his way to the Ecumenical Council of Lyons, to which Pope Gregory X. had summoned him.

Reflection.-- The knowledge of God is for all, but hidden treasures are reserved for those who have ever followed the Lamb.

— Fr. D.B. Thompson