When I finally made it to university, I went to a place named for this
man, The University of Saint Thomas, in Saint Paul, Minnesota and I studied
philosophy there.
It was a grand place, it felt like a
university, with its tall stately buildings made from massive blacks of light
tan stone, Minnesota sandstone quarried from the hills nearby, when I passed
through the arches into the quad I felt like I had arrived.
I studied philosophy, theology and the
classics during my time there. Saint Thomas prepared me for advanced studies
elsewhere, I continued my theological work, though not as exhaustively as he,
his Summa Theologica remains a unique
achievement in the history of Western thought, more important for the mode of
thinking he transmitted his ideas through, than for the conclusions that he
made. His work bridged the gap between the ancient philosophers: Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle (and others), re-employing the tools of logic, and discursive
reasoning that allowed Europeans to leave the Dark Ages, clearing the way for
the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason that followed.
Saint Thomas died on March 7th,
1274. In 1969 the Church moved the day we celebrate his feast to January 28th,
we celebrate his sainthood today. He was Italian by birth, and a member of the
Dominican order, a scholastic, and he was famous in his day. He died while
making a pilgrimage on the Appian Way, death took him at the Cistercian abbey
of Fossanova, and the monks there knowing that he would be famous, and a saint
of great renown, coveted the relics of his body.
They boiled his carcass down and
polished his bones, preserving all of the water for distribution in the relic-trade,
they refused for years to turn his body over to his Dominican brothers, parceling
out his bones and the water bit by bit over time, keeping his skull until the
very end.
The University of Saint Thomas has a
vial of that water in its collection of sacred artifacts, as silly business,
really, and beneath the dignity of the intellectual giant that Aquinas was
known to be.
There is a prayer that Thomas wrote, it
is carved into a column of the main entrance to the school grounds, and I read
it every day or recited it aloud every day that I attended classes on the
campus in Saint Paul.
It is a prayer that I carry with me
still, as if it were written in my heart:
Grant, O Merciful God
That I may ardently desire,
Prudently examine,
Truthfully acknowledge,
And perfectly accomplish
What is pleasing to thee
For the praise and glory
Of thy name
Given First 2020.01.28
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