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Friends,
today we celebrate the feast of the great St. Thomas Aquinas. As a
young student, Thomas famously asked of his theology teacher, "But
Master, what is God?" The story of this question has always struck me as
plausible, for the question sounds so much like Thomas: clear, simple,
spiritually searching.
Thomas
asked questions because the natural curiosity of his mind was hooked
onto the most fascinating of mysteries. He loved God with his whole
mind. It led him to interrogate with critical respect pagan scientists,
Jewish rabbis, Muslim scholars, and the greatest masters of our own
Christian tradition. Thomas's friend and confessor, Reginald of Piperno,
commented that the saint owed his great wisdom much more to prayer than
to study. He would spend hours late at night resting his head on the
tabernacle, begging for knowledge of the sacred mysteries.
We
all know Thomas's title as the Doctor angelicus, the Angelic Doctor,
but perhaps we should reflect more today on his title Doctor communis,
the Common Doctor. In his relentless love of God with his whole mind, in
his consistent analogical imagination rooted in creation and the
Incarnation, in his Christocentrism—Thomas is the touchstone!
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