For millions of Catholics, it is impossible to separate the Feast of Corpus Christi from one of our most beloved and revered theologians, St. Thomas Aquinas.

Fortunately, the Catholic Encyclopedia offers a fairly complete biographical sketch, giving his date of birth either in 1225 or 1227. All agree his death was in 1274. A biography has been discovered written by Peter Calo around 1300.

Thomas’ father was Landulph, Count of Aquino; his mother was Theodora, Countess of Teano. Calo recorded that before Thomas’ birth, a holy hermit predicted to Theodora that her son “will enter the Order of Friars Preachers and so great will be his learning and sanctity that in his day no one will be found equal to him".

At the age of five, the child was sent to study under the Benedictine monks of Monte Casino, where he was seen to be devoted to prayer, frequently asking, “What is God?”

No games for Thomas? No running up and down those long monastic hallways? No tears of loneliness for his parents and brothers? A little less of precocious holiness and a generous portion of child-like behavior would be welcomed by modern Catholics. It’s difficult to use Thomas as an example for the sand-box set. A saint full-grown at five years?

In about 1236, now 11 years old, the Abbot advised Thomas’ father to send his son to the University of Naples for a solid grounding in grammar, logic and rhetoric, music, mathematics, geometry and astronomy. In the midst of such demanding studies, Thomas decided to enter religious life as a Dominican at the convent in Naples.

Some time between 1240 and August, 1243, Thomas received the habit of the Order of St. Dominic, to the wonder of many that he should join an order with few prospects for financial gain or worldly honors. Theodora hurried to Naples to see her son, and insisted that his brothers, soldiers under the Emperor Frederick, should kidnap Thomas and confine him in the fortress of San Giovanni at Rocca Secca for two years. The brothers sent a woman of ill repute to tempt him into betraying his vows, but Thomas dismissed her with a brand he had grabbed from the fire.

Toward the end of his life, Thomas confided to his friend, Reginald of Piperno, that after the woman left, he fell into a gentle sleep in which appeared two angels who assured him his prayer for purity had been heard.

The two years spent in captivity had not been a scholastic loss, as Theodora had given the Dominicans permission to send the books Thomas needed to keep up with his studies, so when he was released to his Dominican brethren by being let down in a basket from the castle wall, he was current with his classmates.

After pronouncing his vows, Thomas was sent to Rome, then to Paris and Cologne, where he was placed under the guidance of Albert the Great, the most renowned professor in the order. Because of humility, and possible temerity, Thomas did not speak out in class, which earned him the title of “the dumb ox.” However, when Albert had heard his brilliant defense of a difficult thesis, he exclaimed: “We call the young man a dumb ox, but his bellows in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.”

It is said that St. Thomas, the Dominican, and St. Bonaventure, the Franciscan, received their doctorates the same day, and out of humility had a gentle argument about who should receive his first.
Immediately, the holy Franciscan was called upon, at the age of thirty-six to serve as the master-general of the Friars Minor, for the purpose of uniting two factions, the ultra strict adherents to St. Francis’ spirit of poverty and those who desired a more relaxed attitude toward poverty and requirements of the institution. He was so successful in uniting the two groups, he has been called the order’s Second Founder. (All Saints by Robert Ellsberg)

Thomas’ life was made up of praying, preaching, teaching, writing and journeying. Some were more anxious to hear him than Albert the Great, for Thomas surpassed hin in accuracy, lucidity, brevity and power of expression.

Only in eternity, will we know how many Catholics sought help in understanding and appreciating their faith through studying the works of this brilliant teacher. His writings are a lesson in humility and compassion as in the Summa he would approach a truth from many directions, determined not to leave a student floundering in confusion.

We’re not surprised that such a holy man would frequently be caught up in ecstasies. In Naples, of 1273, after he had completed his treatise on the Eucharist, three of his brethren saw him lifted in ecstasy and heard a voice proceeding from the crucifix on the altar, saying, “Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward will you have?’ Thomas replied, “None other than Thyself, Lord.”

During December of 1273, he experienced an unusually long ecstasy at Mass, and he told Father Reginald, “I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.” He never completed The Summa Theologica.

Gregory X convoked a general council to open at Lyons on May 1st ,1274, and invited St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure to take part. Thomas tried to obey and set out on foot in January, 1274, but eventually fell to the ground near Terracina, and was taken to the nearby Castle of Maienza, the home of his niece, the Countess Francesca Ceccano. However, when the Cistercian monks of Fossa Nuova invited him to come to them, he accepted, feeling he would prefer not to die in the luxury of the castle.

He died on March 7, 1274 and was canonized by John XXII on July 18, 1323. Calo described the appearance of the saint: “He was of lofty stature and of heavy build, but straight and well proportioned. His complexion was like the colour of new wheat: his head was large and well shaped, and he was slightly bald. All portraits represent him as noble, meditative, gentle yet strong.”

St. Pius V proclaimed St. Thomas a Doctor of the Universal Church in the year 1567.

It would be interesting to hear the favorite quotations of those who have learned to love this great saint. Mine is his definition for peace: “Peace is the tranquility of order.”

Could we not use such tranquility in the halls of government this day, in our educational systems, commerce, Wall Street, families?

In 1264, Pope Urban IV asked St. Thomas Aquinas to compose an Office for the new feast of Corpus Christi, in honor of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The Office that Aquinas wrote – still in use today – is, in its own way, as great a gift to the Catholic Church as his Summa Theologica.

This prayer of thanksgiving by St. Thomas after Mass is the English translation by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Adoro Te Devote (“Hidden God”)

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;
How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed:
What God’s Son has told me, take for truth I do;
Truth himself speaks truly or there’s nothing true.

On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men,
Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:
Both are my confession, both are my belief,
And I pray the prayer of the dying thief.

I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,
But can plainly call thee Lord and God as he;
Let me to a deeper faith daily nearer move,
Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

O thou our reminder of Christ crucified,
Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died,
Lend this life to me then: feed and feast my mind,
There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican:
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran –
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Jesu, whom I look at shrouded here below,
I beseech thee send me what I thirst for so,
Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light
And be blest for ever with thy glory’s sight. Amen.

May, dear friends, the last two lines of Hopkins’ translation be one day true for all of us, for those near and dear, for those far away, for those lost in a whirl of doubt and pain. My love and prayer go with this for the beautiful Feast of Corpus Christ, 2007.
Joy and peace. Amen.

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