Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church
Today is the memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the most important thinkers in all of church history. St. Thomas wrote one of the first works of theology to attempt a systematic treatment of all kinds of questions, like Who is God?, What is evil? and What are the sacraments? He is widely considered the go-to source for Christian theologians wrestling with all kinds of topics. Sometimes he appears, as saints often do, as larger than life, as almost too smart and too influential to be just a man who lived a daily life like you and I.
One of the legends about St. Thomas is that near his death, he remarked that all of his work appeared as mere “straw.” Much has been made of what he could have meant, but a popular interpretation is that Thomas was trying to say that his own experiences of the divine made him realize that despite his great works, he was still just a creature and child of God. Though we run the danger of false humility, an earnest acknowledgement of our own limitations can be an opening for God’s grace. In today’s first reading, we catch a glimpse of the somewhat foreign practices of ancient Israel before the Ark, the presence of God. David dances “with abandon” and the whole community sacrifices animals and grain. Such sacrifices foreshadow our own practice of the Eucharist, a prayer of thanksgiving that is meant to remind us of our dependence on God and God’s radical abundance. Some days it is easy to admit our own shortcomings, to see just how much we rely on God to just get us through. But other days, we work toward certain goals and deadlines with such fervor that it is easy to forget what all of this work is for.
As our parish reflects on discipleship this year, Thomas Aquinas reminds us that all of our lives--even those parts we tend to separate from what we would call “religious”--are meant for the glory of God. This is our baptismal call and the challenge that follows us all of our lives. “Who is this king of glory? It is the Lord!” is today’s psalm refrain and it is, at its heart, a simple call back to the foundation of being a disciple of Jesus. We are called to embrace the cross as our own, to continually seek after the ways in which God is calling us to live out the self-giving love of Christ in the world. Perhaps it is too much to say that our hard work is straw as St. Thomas did. However, his reaction strikes me as one from the heart of someone who has experienced the sheer vastness of God’s grace. And yet we are called to live our lives in the light of such grace, even though they are tiny bits of straw in the vastness of creation.
- Katherine Schmidt