Aquinas Stories

It is usually forgotten that Saint Thomas Aquinas is both a child and a Saint. One day Saint Thomas was reluctantly dragged to the court of King Louis the Ninth of France, to attend a banquet. When they entered Paris someone showed him from a hill the magnificence of the City, saying: "How wonderful it must be to own all this." Saint Thomas only muttered : " I would rather have that Chrysostom manuscript I can't get hold of."


A quote from Aquinas about the importance of practical and simple theology:

"The doctor of Catholic truth ought not only to instruct the proficient, but also to teach beginners. As Saint Paul says, 'As unto little ones in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat.' (i Cor). For this reason it is our purpose in the present work to treat of the things which belong to the Christian religion in such a way as befits the instruction of beginners.

ANOTHER STORY

Saint Thomas once confided to his friend Saint Bonaventure, that whatever he knew, he had for the most part learned from the Book of the Crucifix. One day while he was in prayer, Jesus spoke to him from the crucifix saying, "Well hast thou written of Me, Thomas: what reward would'st thou have?" Chesterton, commenting on this, says: "Nobody supposes that Thomas Aquinas, when offered by God his choice among all the gifts of God, would ask for a thousand pounds, or the crown of Sicily, or a present of rare Greek wine. But he might have asked for things that he really wanted ; and he was man who could want things; as he wanted the lost manuscript of Saint Chrysostom.

He might have asked for the solution of an old difficulty ; or the secret of a new science; or a flash of the inconceivable intuitive mind of the angels; or any one of a thousand things that really would have satisfied his broad and virile appetite for the very vastness and variety of the universe. The point is that for him, when the voice spoke from between the outstretched arms of the Crucified, those arms were truly opened wide, and opening most gloriously the gates of all the worlds; they were arms pointing to the east and to the west, to the ends of the earth and the very extremes of existence. They were truly spread out with a gesture of omnipotent generosity ; the Creator Himself offering Creation itself; with all its millionfold mystery of separate beings, and the triumphal chorus of the creatures. Saint Thomas when he at last lifted his head, spoke with that almost blasphemous audacity, which is one with humility: 'I will have Thyself.' "