St Thomas Aquinas - Tumblr Posts
Benozzo Gozzoli - Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas. 1470 - 1475
"What most characterizes [St. Thomas's] love of truth is his attitude toward his opponents. Indeed, he seems hardly to have opponents, so well does he work with them.
St. Paul says, "Prove all things, hold fast that which is good." To do this, we must first be able to recognize the good when we see it, and that implies sympathy. St. Thomas loved the truth that others possessed, because, as he says, "Truth does not change with the diversity of persons, and whoever maintains it is thereby invincible."
He dealt with his opponents not out of any vindictive desire to refute them, but rather to judge them fairly and meet them halfway. He accepts what is true in them, and rejects what is false, showing where it goes wrong."
-A. G. Sertillanges, OP, Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint
"[St. Thomas Aquinas's] holiness was intellectual, and he gave intellectual expression to the deep, mystical experiences of the greatest souls. His inner, mystical life, his secret communing with God, become in his writings so many abstract concepts, to all appearances as lifeless as the principles of geometry.
He does not use the language of a St. Teresa or a Ruysbroek or a John of the Cross. His vocation was to be a constraining and sobering influence; everything was subordinated to his proper work of teaching, which was not allowed to suffer for the sake of discussing what had no direct bearing on his teaching. The heart and the imagination must be rigorously subordinated to the intelligence.
His asceticism, his religion, his holiness, his oblation, adoration, holocaust was the right use of his reason. "The hero," says Emerson, "is he who is steadfastly concentrated," and it is in this sense that St. Thomas was a genius in philosophy, morality, and mysticism."
-A. G. Sertillanges, OP, Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic Saint
"A glance at the index to the Summa Theologica will show that everything, not only in [St. Thomas Aquinas's] theology, but his philosophy too, is centered in God. Spinoza's philosophy has a similar orientation, and so must every complete system of doctrine, for in God is to be found the ultimate explanation of the whole of knowledge.
All our ideas begin & end with God. All explanation is by universal principles, and ultimately by the First Principle. He who does not see as far as God is shortsighted, however far he may see, and he who does not view things from as far away as God is too near to see them fully.
To refer things to God is the only way to put them in true perspective and thereby to understand t hem aright. We cannot determine the essence, limits, or proportions of anything without this reference to the Supreme Being."
-A. G. Sertillanges, OP, Thomas Aquinas - Scholar, Poet, Mystic, Saint