A Gift From God

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gift, God, Hafiz, harmony, love, Love Poems From God; Twelve Voices from the East and West, St. Thomas Aquinas, stars, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theologian, war

Yesterday’s celebration was for me a great – and surely lasting – gift, a “love fest” of sorts where energy is high and everyone is happy for everyone else. Late in the day I opened a gift from a friend and found a book that I was thrilled to receive entitled Love Poems From God; Twelve Voices from the East and West. The book fell open to the poem I will type below that I assumed was written by the mystical poet, Hafiz, because of what it sounded like. This morning I was surprised to find the author to be St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the great (but in my acquaintance usually cerebral) theologian of the Roman Catholic Church. I have been softening to Thomas lately and will surely have a broader appreciation for his spirituality by the time I finish this book! Because it’s a book of poems, I suspect it will be a companion of mine for many years to come.

WE ARE FIELDS BEFORE EACH OTHER

  How is it that they live for eons in such harmony – the billions of stars – when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag, though that does not keep casualties from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth. We are fields before each other.

How can we live in harmony?

First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.

Angelic Doctor

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Doctor of the Church, faith, harmony, hymns, natural truth, prayers, reason, St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theologian, unity

Today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), one of the most celebrated theologians of all times, held in the esteemed title of Doctor of the Church. Not only was he a theologian and philosopher but he was also a very devout man and priest who wrote beautiful prayers and hymns. Fr. Don Miller (Franciscan Media) captures the essence of his genius, I think, when he comments that “unity, harmony and continuity of faith and reason, of revealed and natural truth pervades his writing.”

The most striking insight of this brilliant man came, it seems, three months before his death. His last work, the Summa theologiae, a compendium of Catholic theology, was unfinished; he stopped writing after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why, he replied, “I cannot go on…All I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

I find myself feeling deeply compassionate for this brilliant, holy man who had worked all his life to understand the workings of God and the universe only to find at the end of his life that holy mystery cannot be captured by the mind but only lived in wonder and awe in one’s whole being. My compassion moves to joy for the fullness of what he had seen that was, paradoxically, the completion of his life’s work.

The Angelic Doctor

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divine revelation, enlightenment, limits, philosopher, reason, St. Thomas Aquinas, surrender, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, The Summa Theologiae, theologian, visionary

St. Thomas Aquinas is “by universal consent…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.” (http://www.americancatholic.org) Thus begins a brief but interesting biography of the saint whose feast the Catholic Church celebrates today. The less well-known but, in my opinion, most important feature of his history is the last paragraph of today’s narrative. Even though Thomas was a brilliant philosopher and theologian, he came to realize the limits of what we humans can know or understand by reason. Here is the conclusion of the text:

“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.”

Blessed be those who come to the enlightenment that is far beyond anything we can ask or imagine! Blessed also those who surrender everything in bowing to that gift.

John of the Cross

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asceticism, being of light, Carmelite, light, Mark, mystic, mysticism, paschal mystery, poet, reformer, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, theologian, Thomas Merton

The biography of St. John of the Cross reads with more twists and turns than a complex novel. It would be foolish of me to try to capsulize it here. Suffice it for me to say that the play of light and darkness was the constant of his years as I yield to other sources for comment.

Americancatholic.org summarizes his life in the following way: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (MK 8:34b) is the story of John’s life. The Paschal Mystery – through death to life – strongly marks John as reformer, mystic-poet, and theologian priest. Thomas Merton said of John: “Just as we can never separate asceticism from mysticism, so in St. John of the Cross we find darkness and light, suffering and joy, sacrifice and love united together so closely that they seem at times to be identified.” As John himself expressed it: “Never was a fount so clear, undimmed and bright; from it alone I know proceeds all light although ’tis night.”

Only one note would I add to these intimations of the seamlessness of seeming opposites in his life, that being the value of feminine influence, most visibly of St. Teresa of Avila, for his spiritual development and understanding of the unity of all things in God. The contribution to the mystical stream and religious life of Christianity by these two saints is vast, something to celebrate with all Carmelite monks and nuns in the world on this feast of John of the Cross.