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Saint of the Day – Saint Thomas Aquinas – January 28
Saint of the Day – Saint Francis de Sales – January 24
Saint of the Day – Saint Ildephonsus of Toledo – January 23
Saint of the Day – Saint Peter Canisius – December 21
Saint of the Day- Saint Teresa of Ávila – October 15
Saint of the Day – Saint Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church – May 13
Saint of the Day – January 29 – Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Saint Francis de Sales: Born: 21 August 1567
Died: 28 December 1622
Canonized: 8 April 1665, by Pope Alexander VII
Patronage:
confessors; writers; journalists; deaf people; educators
Saint of the Day – January 28 – Saint Thomas Aquinas
Saint Thomas Aquinas’ Story (1225 – March 7, 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.
Reflection
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.
Saint Thomas Aquinas is a Patron Saint of:
Catholic Colleges and Universities
Educators/Teachers
Philosophers/Theologians
Students
Saint of the Day – January 2 -Saint Basil the Great, Bishop
St. Basil the Great, Bishop, Father of Eastern Monasticism and Doctor of the Church, was tireless in his pastoral care by preaching to large crowds and doing famine relief.