Words of Straw and Words of Life: The Last Words of St. Thomas Aquinas

There are three saints that were a significant part of my conversion: St. Joseph, St. Maximillian Kolbe, and St. Thomas Aquinas. On March 7th, I was fortunate to attend a celebration of the life of St. Thomas at our Dominican parish. The day marked the 750th anniversary of his death. It still amazes me that my introduction to Catholic thought began with St. Thomas, a Dominican, and that my life as a Catholic began by being confirmed by a priest in the Dominican order. At some point I intend to do a series where we go into all the providential moments in our conversion, but right now I only have time for abstracted pieces of the story.

There are two things that St. Thomas showed me: first, that no matter what denomination, all theological systems have at their core a philosophical system upon which they set their theological beliefs. It is impossible to do one without the other. Second, I learned that while we may be able to separate St. Thomas’ philosophical thought from his theological thought, we cannot separate his holiness from the Catholic faith.

Encountering St. Thomas Aquinas The Philosopher

As I have said before, my parents are some of the most godly people you will meet. When I tell Catholics about our family traditions and the spiritual investments my parents made in us, their eyes get wide and questions about what inspired them fill the rest of the conversation. If it weren’t for them, not only would I have not stood strong for my faith in many high-pressure secular contexts, but I would have never considered seminary as a call on my life.

I attended Southern Evangelical Seminary and received an M.A. in Philosophy. As I entered my first class, I had no formal philosophical training. My analogies were from video games, and my books were highlighted not because of the profound meaning of the author but because I had no idea what they were talking about. Had it not been for my parents daily teaching from the Scriptures and challenging our presuppositions, I’m not sure I would have made it through. They were never content with what I call “bumper sticker” Christianity: words that sound good on the bumper sticker of a car but never stick to the soul.

This was not because my parents are scholars and theologians, but because they believed that our faith, should be woven throughout our lives. Whether it was breakfast and Bible reading before school or traveling home from a track meet, my parents were always ready for a discussion about our faith. When I heard someone say “Devil’s Advocate” I didn’t think of the Catholic Church, I thought of my dad and his usual precursor to a tough question, “Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, and ask you this question…”

In seminary we studied Thomas the philosopher, not Thomas the saint. We treated Thomas the way Thomas treated Aristotle. For our purposes, Thomas Aquinas provided us with the proper philosophy (metaphysics and epistemology) to defend a common sense view of the world and present protestant faith as reasonable. We justified this by citing St. Thomas’ acknowledgment that one does not need to be Catholic in order to benefit from his philosophical categories. Some Catholics may object to this and claim the school was being intellectually dishonest, but I don’t think this is fair. If you’re evangelical and you want to provide a good education, you have to prepare people for evangelical work while simultaneously engaging students on subjects that are true but outside their tradition. In other words, if you’re not going to read the greatest thinkers because they believe stuff you don’t, then you’re seminary is not giving you an education, they are selling you a participation trophy. Furthermore, our approach imitated St. Thomas himself and his interactions Aristotle, aka “The Philosopher.”

Thomas frequently refers to Aristotle as “The Philosopher” throughout his writings, a title that clearly reveals the saint’s high regard for Aristotle’s intellectual thought and its forming of Thomas’ own thought. Despite this profound respect, St. Thomas never left the faith for the false gods of Aristotle. For us evangelical Thomists, Thomas was first a philosopher who happened to be Catholic. Some even speculated that had he lived during the Reformation, he would have been a protestant. Technically speaking, this is logically possible but in reality completely absurd. But this is not something we will tackle today. In summary, while it was never explicitly stated, the implication throughout our education was that Thomas was gifted intellectually, not because of his Catholic faith, but because he was just smart. f

Many protestants will argue that studying Thomas is what leads people to the Catholic Church. This is a silly argument because you can find both those who read Thomas and convert and those who do and never consider crossing the Tiber. It’s like saying that if a Christian reads the Old Testament he will convert to Judaism. Of course some might do just that, but we also have plenty of people who read the Old Testament and see it rightly as the precursor to the New Testament. Furthermore, if what we read necessarily leads us to leave our traditions behind, then St. Thomas, after studying Aristotle should have become a pagan that sought to worship the pantheon of Greek gods.

I don’t think it’s a fair claim that those evangelicals that study Thomas are are on their way to Rome anymore than they are if they read St. Augustine. When evangelicals study Thomism, they are really studying a form of medieval philosophy known as Scholasticism and formulating their own modern take on the Scholastic Tradition. This is a good thing, and I think its better if more people, whether they convert or not read St. Thomas. However, if a protestant begins to consider St. Thomas’ intellectual accomplishments alongside the virtues of his life, it is completely reasonable for them to ask the following questions:

“Why did St. Thomas stay Catholic?”,

“If Catholicism is evil, then why is St. Thomas a man we should emulate in word and deed?”

“Why would such a great thinker end his life subjecting all of his writings to the authority of Rome?”

These questions, I think, are the starting point for any protestant to begin to see the light of the Catholic Church. It’s just a fact that Catholic saints have a holiness that is itself evidence that the Church is who she claims to be, and that God prefers the Catholic Church as the means to make us into saints.

Encountering St. Thomas The Catholic

As I approached my confirmation, I had received a book from a parish in Indian Land, South Carolina called Our Lady of Grace. Fr. Kirby was the priest there, and he was passionate about the Church’s call to Eucharistic Revival. He had given out copies of the book This Is My Body, by one of the most popular Bishops in the country, Bishop Barron. Within it, Barron writes about the importance of the Eucharist in the spiritual life of St. Thomas.

The Eucharist was, for Aquinas, much more than merely a topic of academic interest; it was the center of his spiritual life…One of the most mysterious events in Aquinas’ life centered around the Eucharist. After he had completed his lengthy treatment of the Eucharist in the Summa theologiae, Thomas, still unsure whether he had spoken correctly or even adequately of the sacrament, placed the text at the foot of the crucifix and commenced to pray. According to the well-known legend, a voice came from the cross, “You have written well of me, Thomas. What would you have as a reward?” To which Aquinas responded, “Non nisi te, Domine” (Nothing but you, Lord).

— Bishop Robert Barron, This Is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival. 89-90

It was in this moment that I was affirmed in my later understanding that one could divorce St. Thomas’ philosophy from his theology, but they could not divorce the saint from the Church. Who he was, his accomplishments, but more importantly, his virtue was an example of what the Church could do with dust. God is the sculptor, we are the marble, but the Church and her sacraments are the chisels.

As I reflected on Thomas as a Catholic, and not merely a philosopher, I had to ask: is he just an undiagnosed case of mild autism, or was he an example of the work Christ does through The Church, not to be confused with a Church? After reflecting on my bookshelf of dead thinkers, who at this point were mostly Catholic, I had to reconcile the fact that maybe the Church really is the matter or the “stuff” that God uses to conform us to Christ. Maybe it wasn’t the case the Thomas and others were just smart. Maybe it was that by submitting to the Church, they became supernaturally mailable. Another way of saying this is, “those who lose their lives will find it.” This is experienced when we submit to another. Whether its the military, the church, a marriage, submission is us essentially saying “My will is no longer mine, but yours.”

St. Thomas’ Last Words

For those that don’t know, St. Thomas was a member of the Dominicans. Known as the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans are a religious order within the Catholic Church. My wife and I were confirmed on December 31st, 2023 by a priest within that same order. As we reflected St. Thomas’ life this week, it was incredible to see how God had used a Dominican to introduce us to the Church and then used the Dominicans to confirm us into the Church.

The day after we were confirmed, January 1, 2024, The Thomistic Institute released an episode dedicated to the saint titled, Dumb Ox to Angelic Doctor. The lecture is led by Fr. McDonough. In it he gives a brief overview of the saint’s life and recounts St. Thomas’ final days. He also lists some interesting facts. For example, one is that St. Thomas had written approximately 10 million words throughout his life (#Goals). Fr. McDonough also gets into St. Thomas’ spiritual life and challenges. Apparently, St. Thomas expressed reservation about his abilities. Early on in his life he admitted that the tasks the Church had presented him with were “beyond his powers.” But as Fr. McDonough says, “[St. Thomas] did it anyway.”

Most people familiar with St. Thomas know that he had a vision at the end of his life that caused him to say of his writings, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” This is sometimes used by anti-Catholics to show that St. Thomas’ writings and thoughts should not be held in high regard. The argument goes like this: If St. Thomas regarded them as straw, why should we consider them higher than he did? To the flames with them!

The quick answer is that seeing is believing. If I were to ask you, which do you want your Bible or to be in Heaven with God? What would you say? The answer should be obvious. Relative to being in the presence of God, no word can compare, not even St. Thomas’ or the Bibles’. To see God, is to have eternal life. So we take the grace that God deems sufficient.

But a better answer to this is what St. Thomas said in his final hours. As his departure from this life neared, he did not condemn his writings further or reject them; he submitted them to Christ and the Church. As death approached, St. Thomas readied himself to receive Christ in the Eucharist one last time, he said the following¹:

I receive you, price of my soul’s redemption. I receive you, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched and labored. I have preached you. I have taught you…

The Communion of the Saints was an obstacle for me during my discernment process, but now I’m convinced that St. Thomas was one of those heavenly heroes praying me into the Church. After my first confession, I found myself kneeling in front of the altar thanking, God yes, but also St. Thomas for praying for me and being an example of a superior intellect that became supernaturally mailable the grace of God and the grace found in the Church.

Anyone can read lots of books, but there is a difference between the intellectual and the saint. An intellectual submits his ideas to journals and the world, and the saint submits his ideas to God and the Church. St. Thomas, yet again, leaves us with an example of how to offer our gifts back to God:

…Never have I said anything against you [Jesus], and if I have done so, it is through ignorance, and I am not stubborn in my error. If I have taught wrongly concerning this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I now leave this life.

1. Subsequently the substantive "viaticum" figuratively meant the provision for the journey of life and finally by metaphor the provision for the passage out of this world into the next. It is in this last meaning that the word is used in sacred liturgy.