I’ve published the Second Edition of Catholic College Student’s Spiritual Survival Guide updating sections Are Catholic’s Saved? (with material on What Exactly Is Salvation? and Why Jesus Died on the Cross) and Purgatory (including material on Indulgences).
Today, Pope Francis asserts, it is essential to consider anew what Thomas calls our “natural inclination to know the truth about God, and to live in society,” in order to “shape social thought and policies in ways that promote, rather than hinder, the authentic human development of individuals and peoples.”
Bishop Robert Baron also posted a video about his participation in this workshop where he delivered a talk, intriguingly titled “Ipsum Esse in Relation to Catholic Social Thought.” Other papers focused on Saint Thomas’s teaching on natural law and the human person in relation to contemporary concerns. Some examples,
Prof. Hans Joas – Organic Social Ethics and the Sacredness of the Person. Thomas Aquinas as a Challenge for Sociological Theory
Prof. Pierpaolo Donati – Thomas Aquinas and the Ontology of Relationships: Actualization of a Theological and SocioCultural Matrix
Prof. Jean Porter – Natural Law, Equality, and Social Order in Aquinas’ Moral and Legal Thought
Fr. Albino Barrera – A Thomistic Ontology of Collective Economic Responsibility: Holding the Invisible Hand to Account
Prof. Greg Reichberg – Thomistic Resources for Contemporary Ethics of War
Prof. Gyula Klima – Intelligence: Human vs. Artificial
I was surprised that the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences was the group that hosted a workshop on Saint Thomas at the Abbey of Fossanova and not the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance. But, then again, the former seems to have been more consistently active over the years than the latter, but hopefully that will be changing. Checking out Thomistica.net, I found there are many other conferences organized on Thomistic thought for the saint’s jubilees, but some of these are equally surprising, such as at the University of Tulsa. But good for them! I am happy Saint Thomas’s legacy is being celebrated during the years of his Jubilees.
I was also struck by the fact that so many scholars engaged with Saint Thomas with regard to sociology, as such. I was reminded that it took/takes some intellectual effort for scholars trained in Catholic/scholastic traditions to discern and embrace the genuine scientific character of the social sciences such that the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome only established an Institute of Social Sciences within the Faculty of Philosophy in 1951, later raising it to a Faculty in 1974 (the 700th anniversary of the death of Saint Thomas).
I am proud that my uncle, Msgr. William T. Magee (a priest of the Diocese of Winona, Minnesota, of which Bp. Barron, coincidentally, is now the bishop) studied at the Angelicum at this time and published his dissertation The Formal Object of Sociology and Its Place among the Sciences in 1952. I wonder if his work and interest in the then-nascent field of modern, statistical sociology contributed to the Institute of Social Sciences being established there.
On this occasion of his death, I offer a few of his reflections on the necessity of death for material creatures which we all are, and more importantly, the good God brings from this seemingly most bitter of life’s defeats, even and especially Saint Thomas’s own. It is fitting, then, during Lent to “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”
In my essay “The Problem of Evil in Aquinas,” I explain that for Saint Thomas natural evils, such as death and disease, are privations or the lack of a due good, but that God in general permits the evil of death and decay as a necessary part of the good of a universe of creatures composed of matter whose potential is never completely actualized by the forms (or souls) of living things. Unlike incorruptible creatures – angels, who are simply form without matter, and celestial bodies whose forms completely actualize their matter – we terrestrial (physical) creatures are able to corrupt (die) because our matter can become the matter for other material forms (as elements turn into plants which are eaten by animals, and some animals eat others). Yet God permits this corruptibility because such creatures are genuinely good, and they are part of an overall universal good. As he explains:
Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe. A lion would cease to live, if there were no slaying of animals.
Of course, death and natural evil were not originally part of God’s plan for humans, according to the Christian faith; human death itself is a consequence of moral evil, Adam and Eve’s Original Sin. Saint Thomas, as a Christian, believes that our first human parents lived in the garden of Eden in an original harmony with God; they were immortal and not subject to harm or decay, but God bestowed this immortality by a special, miraculous favor, not by changing the nature of material being. (ST I, 97, 1)
Saint Thomas, as I try to show in the Problem of Evil essay, goes further to say that natural evils like death, as well as moral evils which sadly cause it, can also be necessary for greater moral goods like care, compassion, comfort, or cure, and for patience, courage, justice, and sacrifice.
But when it comes to one’s own end to this earthly life, Saint Thomas also argues that being freed from this physical body is necessary to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God in His Essence. This is well known as part of the Christian faith, for as Saint Paul says, “we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord . . ., and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.” (2 Cor 5:6,8). Saint Thomas, though, gives an explanation for this in terms of his philosophical psychology:
God cannot be seen in His essence by a mere human being, except he be separated from this mortal life. The reason is because, as was said above (Article 4), the mode of knowledge follows the mode of the nature of the knower. But our soul, as long as we live in this life, has its being in corporeal matter; hence naturally it knows only what has a form in matter, or what can be known by such a form. Now it is evident that the Divine essence cannot be known through the nature of material things. For it was shown above (ST I, 2, 9) that the knowledge of God by means of any created similitude is not the vision of His essence. Hence it is impossible for the soul of man in this life to see the essence of God. This can be seen in the fact that the more our soul is abstracted from corporeal things, the more it is capable of receiving abstract intelligible things. Hence in dreams and alienations of the bodily senses divine revelations and foresight of future events are perceived the more clearly. It is not possible, therefore, that the soul in this mortal life should be raised up to the supreme of intelligible objects, i.e. to the divine essence.
Even though that Saint Thomas himself, one supposes, experienced a mystical experience of God Himself (after which the Angelic Doctor declared that all he had written seemed as straw), such mystical experiences received while one remains in the flesh are, of their nature temporary and transient (ST I-II, 175), could not suffice for the glory of the Beatific Vision for which we were created and to which, through our cooperation with God’s grace, we are called (consummated in a ‘certain grasp’ of the Beloved by the lover). No doubt, Saint Thomas contemplated these truths as he shuffled off this mortal coil, and went to his eternal reward with gratitude and humility.
Posthumous portrait of Fra Angelico with self-portrait of Lucca Signorelli.
Today, February 18, is the feast day of one of my favorite artists and Dominican saints and blesseds, Fra Angelico, or Blessed John of Fiesole. What follows is mostly a repost of my commemoration of his feast day from 2022 that presents my digital pictures of many of his frescos from the Museum of the Convent of San Marco in Florence. I recently learned, however, that Lucca Signorelli included a portrait of Fra Angelico along with his own self-portrait in the corner of his famous The Preaching of the Antichrist fresco in the Capella Nuova in Orvieto Cathedral as he completed work the Dominican Blessed had begun about 50 years earlier. Bl. Fra Angelico, with the aid of Benozzo Gozzoli, only completed two of the vault sections of this chapel in the Cathedral (see image below). (For the connection to Thomistic Philosophy, it will be remembered that Saint Thomas Aquinas was in residence with the Papal Court of Urban IV in Orvieto when a Eucharistic miracle occurred which led to Saint Thomas composing the liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi, which is also commemorated in another chapel of the cathedral (I include my pics in the linked blog posts).)
The Preaching of the Antichrist (1503) by Lucca Signorelli in the Capella Nuova in the Cathedral of Orvieto.Vault sections painted by Bl. Fra Angelico, with the aid of Benozzo Gozzoli. 1447.
Bl. John was born in 1395 and died on today’s date 1455. In his ministry as a Dominican friar and priest, he preached with color and brush, and became a master of the early renaissance who incorporated perspective and proportion into his work, innovating naturalism and realism in Western Art.
An early portrait of Saint Thomas Aquinas by Bl. Fra Angelico in Museo di San Marco in Florence
The Mocking of Christ
He painted many portraits of Saint Dominic and Saint Thomas Aquinas, or incorporated them among the saints in attendance in his Biblical or theological frescos which he painted in the friars’ cells in the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence.
I was excited to visit the Museo di San Marco for the first time in 2018 and to see the paintings that I have come to know from my time in the Dominican Order. I did not realize, however, that almost all of Fra Angelico’s work was painted into the convent as frescos, and so I was not prepared to see all at once two of the works most important to me, personally, in the cloister garden of the friary.
As soon as one enters the cloister after entering the museum, one immediately encounters the fresco of Saint Dominic contemplating the Crucifixion. I was given a post card of this fresco when I was a novice with the Dominicans, and I kept it displayed on my desk through out my years in seminary and later in graduate school, often contemplating it while studying (or idling when I was supposed to be studying). To see the larger-than-life painting on the wall of the cloister was quite overwhelming.
Also in the cloister is a portrait fresco of Saint Thomas Aquinas that is quite famous and which I use as the sort of logo of the Thomistic Philosophy Page. This image also accompanied my in my studies. Some years into my graduate studies, my uncle who was a priest, Msgr. William Magee, willed to me some of his personal effects when he died, among them a wooden statue of Saint Thomas he had acquired in Rome when he studied at the Angelicum as a young priest, and a framed copy of the portrait of Saint Thomas.
Again, to see it there adorning a space above a door out of the cloister was quite unexpected, and a little unnerving. I’m not sure where I thought these images were supposed to be, but in San Marco, Fra Angelico’s work is everywhere. I was delighted to be there, and tried to spend time contemplating all of the works, but like most museums, it can be pretty overwhelming. I certainly spent more time with Bl. John’s painting than my wife was ready to, and when we returned in 2019, she had had quite enough of San Marco, and by the end of that trip, enough of Florence.
Tomb of Blessed John of Fiosole in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
I include below a few of my favorite images of Fra Angelico I took on our two trips to Florence including this one of his tomb I literally stumbled upon in the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, near the Pantheon.
One of my favorites, Madonna and Child with Saints. I especially like St. Dominic on the left engaging the viewer with his gaze. Quite ahead of his time.This cat was not painted by Fra Angelico, but is in the detail of a Last Supper in the refectory of the convent. It was the high-point of the visit for my wife.Noli me tangere. “Do not cling to me.” Christ to Mary Magdalen after the Resurrection.Who says Dominicans and Franciscans never get along?
Statue of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Angelicum in Rome
This year’s Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas falls within the Triple Jubilee of the saint celebrating the 700th anniversary of his canonization (July 18, 1373), the 750th anniversary of his death (March 7, 1274), and the 800th anniversary of his birth (1225). As I noted before, the Church chose January 28 — the date his relics were translated from the Abbey of Fossanova to Toulouse in France in 1369 — as his feast day in 1969 in order to keep the celebration from falling within the season of Lent. So, today is not exactly the 750th anniversary of his death, but probably is, or is close to, when he fell ill in 1274 and was ultimately brought to the Cistercian monastery where he would ultimately die.
There are a couple of details about his lingering illness and ultimate death at Fossanova as recorded in the records of his canonization inquiry that I find interesting. The first is that upon entering the monastery, he allegedly quoted Psalm 131 (132):14, Hæc réquies mea in sæculum sæculi: hic habitábo, quóniam elégi eam. (This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it.) I am sure he uttered this piously to indicate that he knew he would die here, but Saint Thomas is actually quoting God through the psalmist as approving the placement of the Ark of the Covenant on Mount Zion in Jerusalem and as establishing the permanence of the Davidic royal line. Christians read this psalm as a prophecy of the coming of the Son of God (Jesus) to fulfill the promise of the eternal kingdom of David through his decedents, and God’s abiding presence among His people.
Second, I find interesting the accounts of how he died and what he requested be read to him from Scripture. As G. K. Chesterton notes,
It may be worth remarking, for those who think that he thought too little of the emotional or romantic side of religious truth, that he asked to have The Song of Solomon read through to him from beginning to end.
The Dumb Ox (Image Books 2014, p. 118
Jean Bondol, “The bride (Ecclesia) and bridegroom (Christ),” from a Bible Historiale made in Paris, 1371–72. The Hague, MMW [Museum Meermanno Westeenianum], 10 B 23, fol. 330v. https://artandtheology.org/tag/song-of-solomon/
Some accounts assert that Saint Thomas on his deathbed commented line-by-line on the Song of Songs, and that the monks of Fossanova recorded this commentary; indeed, there are preserved texts of commentaries attributed to Saint Thomas, but these have proved to be spurious. It seems a bit much to believe that the dying friar should be lucid enough to offer a commentary on the book, and it would seem to go against the claim he had stopped his literary or theological work. But, it is still remarkable that Saint Thomas would choose for the monks to read so ’emotional or romantic’ a work of Scripture to him as he lay dying.
For those who may not be familiar with it, The Song of Solomon (or The Song of Songs (Canticum Canticorum)) is a collection of love poems in the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament having allegorical meaning as declarations of affection, desire, and joy between God and His people Israel, and, for Christians, being fulfilled in the marriage of Jesus Christ to His Bride, the Church. As the Introduction to the Song of Songs in the New American Bible puts it:
The Song of Songs (or Canticle of Canticles) is an exquisite collection of love lyrics, arranged to tell a dramatic tale of mutual desire and courtship. It presents an inspired portrayal of ideal human love, a resounding affirmation of the goodness of human sexuality that is applicable to the sacredness and the depth of married union.
…
While the lovers in the Song are clearly human figures, both Jewish and Christian traditions across the centuries have adopted “allegorical” interpretations. The Song is seen as a beautiful picture of the ideal Israel, the chosen people whom the Lord leads by degrees to a greater understanding and closer union in the bond of perfect love. Such readings of the Song build on Israel’s covenant tradition….
Christian tradition has followed Israel’s example in using marriage as an image for the relationship with God. This image is found extensively in the New Testament (Mt 9:15; 25:1–13; Jn 3:29; 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:23–32; Rev 19:7–9; 21:9–11). Thus the Song has been read as a sublime portrayal and praise of this mutual love of the Lord and his people. Christian writers have interpreted the Song in terms of the union between Christ and the Church and of the union between Christ and the individual soul, particularly in the writings of Origen and St. Bernard.
There seems to be evidence that the Song of Songs had been laying upon Saint Thomas’s mind toward the end of his life, and so it may not be surprising he sought out this work of Scripture to be read to him when his life finally did end. In a late work, Compendium of Theology, possibly composed close to when Saint Thomas received the mystical experience after which he stopped writing, he does not use “beatific vision” exclusively as model for experience of heaven, as he did consistently in the Summa Theologiae (cf., I-II, 2, 8; 3, 8). Rather, he emphasizes also the love of enjoyment or possession of the Beloved by citing Scripture’s use of comprehension to describe the union of the blessed with God in heaven. Instead of approving the cognitive sense of this term, since comprehensive knowledge of God is impossible for a created intellect (ST I, 12, 7), he invokes comprehension as the permanent grasp of lovers.
The ultimate good is also known as comprehension, a word suggested by Philippians 3:12: “I follow after, if I may by any means comprehend.” The term is not, of course, used in the sense according to which comprehension implies enclosing; for what is enclosed by another is completely contained by it as a whole. The created intellect cannot completely see God’s essence, that is, in such a way as to attain to the ultimate and perfect degree of the divine vision, and so to see God to the extent that he is capable of being seen….
Nevertheless, comprehension is promised to the saints, in the sense of the word ‘comprehension’ that implies a certain grasp…. Accordingly, while we are in the body, as the matter is put in 2 Corinthians 5:6–7, “we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.” And so we press on toward him as toward some distant goal. But when we see him by direct vision we shall hold him present within ourselves. Thus in the Song of Songs 3:4, the spouse seeks him whom her soul loves; and when at last she finds him she says: “I held him, and I will not let him go.”
To be sure, Saint Thomas still considers our final happiness to consist in “direct vision” through intellectual knowledge or apprehension of the Divine Essence in Himself. But here in this late work, he invokes the Song of Songs to emphasizes the “comprehension” in the sense of “certain grasp” that the soul will have, and by its own act of will, i.e., its love of Him Who is seen in that vision, clings permanently to its Beatific Vision, and enjoys the consummation with Him Whom the soul loves in its vision.
For Saint Thomas at the end of his life to emphasize the love with which a soul in heaven clings to the Beatific Vision of God in Himself, perhaps gives a nuance to the age-old dispute between Dominicans and Franciscan, Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure, over what is more fundamental to the Christian life, knowledge of God or love of God. On this Jubilee Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, let us rejoice in contemplating the truth that knowledge and love become one in the Beatific Vision, and yearn for that consummation with love of the Ultimate Good as delivered through Truth Himself.
If you are in Houston, Texas, USA, the University of Saint Thomas is hosting a week-long Festival of Saint Thomas starting Sunday, January 28, on the Feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
It was 750 years ago last Wednesday, December 6, that Saint Thomas Aquinas received a vision that changed the course of his life and presaged its closing acts. As I wrote in 2021,
As is well known, on December 6, 1273, Saint Thomas had some sort of mystical experience while celebrating Mass in the Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, after which he stopped writing his as yet unfinished magnum opus of the Summa Theologiae. Having only completed Quaestiones 73-83 of the Tertia Pars on the Holy Eucharist, he was in the middle of his treatment on the Sacrament of Penance when he rested his pen permanently. Eventually, he confided to his secretary that he could write no more, since after what had been revealed to him, it seemed that what he had written was only so much straw.
What is seldom mentioned is that December 6 is the Feast Day of Saint Nicholas, the 4th century bishop of Myra, who was a staunch opponent of Arianism, the heresy which denies the mystery of the Incarnation whereby the Son of God became truly a man, a human baby. (So staunch was Saint Nicolas’s opposition to Arianism that he is reputed (probably apocryphally) to have slapped (punched, in some versions) an obstinate heretic (Arius himself, in some versions) at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.)
It is this mystery of Our Lord’s Incarnation that the Church celebrates at Christmas, and perhaps is another reason St. “Nick” became the inspiration for Santa Claus (along with the saint’s penchant for secretive gift giving).
It is, however, even more significant that St. Thomas received the private revelatory vision which rendered him theologically taciturn on the memorial of Saint Nicholas/Santa Clause and perhaps sheds unexpected (and indubitably historically unfounded) insight into this provocative text (considered spurious by some (which is to say all) Thomistic scholars): Five Ways of Proving for the Existence of Santa Claus. Could this lost article of the Summa be Saint Thomas’ truly final written text, the last bit of straw he produced in homage to the saint on whose feast day he saw the true value of his work when compared to an unobstructed and unencumbered vision of Divine Truth Itself? We will perhaps only know the truth when we, by God’s grace, come to share in the same Beatific Vision.
For a serious discussion of Saint Thomas’ tenure at San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, see this fine Facebook post by Bishop Robert Barron.
Today, Tuesday, July 18, is the 700th anniversary of the Canonization of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which begins a two-year jubilee celebrating this great saint and covers the 750th anniversary of his death on March 7, 2024 and the 800th anniversary of his birth in 2025. The Vatican News Service reported that Pope Francis is sending Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, as special envoy to the celebration that will take place in Fossanova Abbey, the location of St. Thomas’s death.
Miracles
As this two-year jubilee begins with the 700th anniversary of canonization of Saint Thomas, I found among the accounts of the several inquiries into his life conducted as part of the canonization process the story of one miracle that I always found rather charming:
Soused herrings
When Thomas lay sick in the castle of Maenza and was urged to eat something, he answered, ‘I would eat fresh herrings, if I had some.’ Now it happened that a peddler called just then with salted fish. He was asked to open his baskets, and one was found full of fresh herrings … But when the herrings were brought to Thomas, he would not eat them.
Thomas said, ‘Do you think you could get me some fresh herrings?’ The socius replied, ‘Oh, yes, across the Alps, in France or England!’ But just then a fishmonger called Bordonario arrived at the castle [and] on opening the baskets, the man found one full of fresh herrings[, which] were unknown in Italy. And while the fishmonger was swearing that he had brought sardines, not herrings, brother Reginald ran off to tell Thomas, crying, ‘God has given you what you wanted – herrings!’
There has been some controversy about this one miracle (among the many) attributed to Saint Thomas, as though he received a sham-canonization on the basis of what must be one bogus miracle alone. But it is clear that these (several) inquiries concern (many, many) miracles which occurred during his life as a testament to his general, earthly sanctity. That he is among the blessed in heaven, however, has been established, as with all (non-martyred) saints, through the miracles proven to have taken place through his intercession after his death, of which there are indeed also many.
Indulgences
And what would a Jubilee be without Indulgences to be received? As the Catholic News Agency reports, the Holy See has granted a plenary indulgence to anyone “making a pilgrimage to a holy site connected to the Dominican Order to either take part in the jubilee celebrations or ‘at least devote a suitable time to pious recollection,’ concluding by praying the Lord’s Prayer, reciting the Creed, and invoking the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Thomas Aquinas. Any church, shrine, or chapel currently entrusted to the Dominican Order can meet the requirements for the pilgrimage.” So a trip to France or Italy is not required to fulfill the conditions of making the pilgrimage and receiving the remission of temporal punishments for sin. For the complete account of the requirements, including the ordinary conditions, please consult the CNA article.
Saint Thomas, of course, is on record as approving the theory and practice of indulgences:
Hence we must say on the contrary that indulgences hold good both in the Church’s court and in the judgment of God, for the remission of the punishment which remains after contrition, absolution, and confession, whether this punishment be enjoined or not. The reason why they so avail is the oneness of the mystical body in which many have performed works of satisfaction exceeding the requirements of their debts; in which, too, many have patiently borne unjust tribulations whereby a multitude of punishments would have been paid, had they been incurred. So great is the quantity of such merits that it exceeds the entire debt of punishment due to those who are living at this moment: and this is especially due to the merits of Christ: for though He acts through the sacraments, yet His efficacy is nowise restricted to them, but infinitely surpasses their efficacy.
If you are unfamiliar or uncertain what indulgences are, how they contribute to salvation, and what their connection to purgatory is, you can read this brief explanation.
Relics
I had previously reported that the relics of the Angelic Doctor would be traveling from their resting place in Toulouse, France, to various locations for public veneration as part of this Jubilee. As I did in my first blog post to celebrate the Feast of Saint Thomas back in 2021, I remind readers that, as with indulgences, the beloved saint himself believed that the veneration of relics is a pious and fitting practice, despite the squeamishness it may provoke in us due to our modern sensibilities:
“Saint Thomas himself acknowledges that such devotion is right and fitting as it is an extension of the honor and veneration that ought to be given to the Body of Jesus Christ. It is indeed for the Angelic Doctor one of the furthest expressions of the Incarnation whereby lowly matter is exalted and made worthy of honor by being united with a very Person God as the saints were temples and instruments of God’s presence in this very material world.
Now it is manifest that we should show honor to the saints of God, as being members of Christ, the children and friends of God, and our intercessors. Wherefore in memory of them we ought to honor any relics of theirs in a fitting manner: principally their bodies, which were temples, and organs of the Holy Ghost dwelling and operating in them, and are destined to be likened to the body of Christ by the glory of the Resurrection. Hence God Himself fittingly honors such relics by working miracles at their presence.
I had mentioned in that 2021 post on the Feast of Saint Thomas that as a Dominican novice I was told that the body of Saint Thomas had remained incorrupt after his death, but that, in an effort to retain his earthly remains and keep them from his Dominican brothers, the Cistercian monks of Fossanova Abbey repeatedly moved his body within the monastery, until they boiled it down to bones and hid them within their walls. Marika Räsänen confirms this story from sources cited during the process of Saint Thomas’s canonization and recounted in a work I previously commended: Thomas Aquinas’s Relics as Focus for Conflict and Cult in the Late Middle Ages: The Restless Corpse.
Today, the second Sunday after Pentecost, is the Solemnity of Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, or in Latin, Corpus Christi. As I posted a few years ago, Saint Thomas Aquinas had a particular devotion to Jesus Christ really present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, and when he was present in the papal court when it was in residence in Orvieto in 1263, a miracle occurred in the nearby town of Bolsena, which was brought to the attention of the Pope Urban IV.
Saint Thomas Aquinas present his completed liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi to Pope Urban IV – from a fresco by Ugolino d’Ilario in the Cathedral of Orvieto, Italy
After investigating and determining the authenticity of the miracle, the pope commissioned Friar Thomas to compose the liturgy for today’s feast of Corpus Christi ,which Urban established a year later. The liturgy contains several moving reflections on the meaning, importance and value of how Jesus fulfills his promise “I am with you even to the end of the age” in Matthew 28:20. The liturgy also contains five Latin hymns composed by Saint Thomas that are among the most beautiful and lyrical, and are still used for Eucharistic Adoration, as for example on Holy Thursday as the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession to the Altar of Repose where it remains for the rest of the Easter Triduum. That Saint Thomas wrote such moving poetry from his very deep personal devotion gives the lie to the contention that he was a heartless and abstracted intellectual.
Here are two of my favorite Eucharistic hymns of his.
Adoro te devote (Devoutly I Adore Thee)
ADORO te devote, latens Deitas, quae sub his figuris vere latitas: tibi se cor meum totum subiicit, quia te contemplans totum deficit.
Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur, sed auditu solo tuto creditur; credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius: nil hoc verbo Veritatis verius.
In cruce latebat sola Deitas, at hic latet simul et humanitas; ambo tamen credens atque confitens, peto quod petivit latro paenitens.
Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor; Deum tamen meum te confiteor; fac me tibi semper magis credere, in te spem habere, te diligere.
O memoriale mortis Domini! panis vivus, vitam praestans homini! praesta meae menti de te vivere et te illi semper dulce sapere.
Pie pellicane, Iesu Domine, me immundum munda tuo sanguine; cuius una stilla salvum facere totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.
Iesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, oro fiat illud quod tam sitio; ut te revelata cernens facie, visu sim beatus tuae gloriae. Amen.
HIDDEN God, devoutly I adore Thee, truly present underneath these veils: all my heart subdues itself before Thee, since it all before Thee faints and fails.
Not to sight, or taste, or touch be credit hearing only do we trust secure; I believe, for God the Son has said it- Word of truth that ever shall endure.
On the cross was veiled Thy Godhead’s splendor, here Thy manhood lies hidden too; unto both alike my faith I render, and, as sued the contrite thief, I sue.
Though I look not on Thy wounds with Thomas, Thee, my Lord, and Thee, my God, I call: make me more and more believe Thy promise, hope in Thee, and love Thee over all.
O memorial of my Savior dying, Living Bread, that gives life to man; make my soul, its life from Thee supplying, taste Thy sweetness, as on earth it can.
Deign, O Jesus, Pelican of heaven, me, a sinner, in Thy Blood to lave, to a single drop of which is given all the world from all its sin to save.
Contemplating, Lord, Thy hidden presence, grant me what I thirst for and implore, in the revelation of Thy essence to behold Thy glory evermore. Amen.
Here is nice video of the hymn, sung solemnly, with the text in Latin:
Interestingly (and probably sacrilegiously), Adoro te can also be sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas (link to it being sung badly)
Pange lingua (the last two stanzas of which are often sung as Tantum ergo Sacramentum)
PANGE, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium, Sanguinisque pretiosi, quem in mundi pretium fructus ventris generosi Rex effudit Gentium.
Nobis datus, nobis natus ex intacta Virgine, et in mundo conversatus, sparso verbi semine, sui moras incolatus miro clausit ordine.
In supremae nocte cenae recumbens cum fratribus observata lege plene cibis in legalibus, cibum turbae duodenae se dat suis manibus.
Verbum caro, panem verum verbo carnem efficit: fitque sanguis Christi merum, et si sensus deficit, ad firmandum cor sincerum sola fides sufficit.
Tantum ergo Sacramentum veneremur cernui: et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui: praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.
Genitori, Genitoque laus et iubilatio, salus, honor, virtus quoque sit et benedictio: procedenti ab utroque compar sit laudatio. Amen. Alleluia.
SING, my tongue, the Savior’s glory, of His flesh the mystery sing; of the Blood, all price exceeding, shed by our immortal King, destined, for the world’s redemption, from a noble womb to spring.
Of a pure and spotless Virgin born for us on earth below, He, as Man, with man conversing, stayed, the seeds of truth to sow; then He closed in solemn order wondrously His life of woe.
On the night of that Last Supper, seated with His chosen band, He the Pascal victim eating, first fulfills the Law’s command; then as Food to His Apostles gives Himself with His own hand.
Word-made-Flesh, the bread of nature by His word to Flesh He turns; wine into His Blood He changes;- what though sense no change discerns? Only be the heart in earnest, faith her lesson quickly learns.
Down in adoration falling, Lo! the sacred Host we hail; Lo! o’er ancient forms departing, newer rites of grace prevail; faith for all defects supplying, where the feeble sense fail.
To the everlasting Father, and the Son who reigns on high, with the Holy Ghost proceeding forth from Each eternally, be salvation, honor, blessing, might and endless majesty. Amen. Alleluia.
Again, interestingly (and probably sacrilegiously), Pange lingua/Tantum ergo can be sung to Oh My Darling Clementine. I apologize that I cannot find, and have not made, a recording of the Latin hymn sung to that tune. Mea culpa.
I have posted edited and expanded notes on the nature of rational knowledge taken from my undergraduate days at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology initially written by A. Moreno, OP (of happy memory) and M. Dodds, OP. I am immensely grateful for the introduction and instruction in Thomistic philosophy as a young friar under their wise tutelage, especially also of V. Gualiardo, OP (of happy memory).
In these notes you will find such fascinating and controversial topics in the psychology of Saint Thomas Aquinas as:
In a previous post, I noted that the film Everything, Everywhere, All at Oncemischaracterizes the admittedly unjust condemnation, and worse, the penalty, Galileo received as the result of his two trials for heresy by the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition of the Catholic Church. In that post I gave instead a more accurate, though brief, recounting of his alleged “crime” and the actual penalties he received; neither he, nor as far as I know, has anyone been “killed and tortured for believing otherwise” than that the earth was the center of the universe. The filmmakers thus failed to deliver the main thing that one looks for in film, vis. the fair and accurate presentation of historical philosophical and theological ideas and disputes.
Despite this failure, EEAaO is nevertheless insightful in describing the effect of scientific progress in creating a modern crisis over the loss of intrinsic worth and meaning. The film also presents what seems to me a fundamentally Christian response or answer to this meaninglessness and loss of worth. I think EEAaO is an excellent film for these reasons, and I recommend readers see it, if they have not done so already. The film is also funny, creative, excellently acted and visually stunning, so it has all that going for it, too. [The following summary and analysis contains spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie, and want to discover its plot fresh, read no further.]
The film follows the main character, Evelyn Wang, the owner of a failing laundromat, facing tax troubles and in a seemingly failing marriage to a funny and kind, though hopelessly impractical man Waymond. Evelyn is also mother to floundering young adult daughter, Joy, who is in a lesbian relationship that Evelyn cannot reveal to her elderly father, who disowned her for her youthful decision to marry Waymond, but who now has come to live with them. As a different version of Waymond suddenly explains through the body of her familiar husband, Evelyn is the key to defeating the truly metaphysically existential danger, the film’s antagonist, Jobu Tupaki, who threatens to annihilate the whole of reality. For, an Evelyn in another parallel universe was among a few special individuals who discovered how to jump between universes, but Jobu Tupaki became virtually omniscient and omnipotent by doing so at will, while being simultaneously aware of herself in all of them. The film, then, chronicles the adventure of Evelyn out-running Jobu, while learning her unique abilities, until ultimately confronting Jobu in a climactic battle.
The Problem Science Poses
I think the movie makes two interesting and insightful observations. The first is that scientific progress does not alleviate the meaninglessness of life viewed naturalistically, but exacerbates it. This is the context for Jobu Tupaki’s mischaracterization of some of the history of science (Galileo and the Church), as she describes how her existential crisis (as paradigmatic of modern individuals’) results from the progress of science.
At one point, Evelyn learns that Jobu Tupaki is her daughter, Joy, from another universe whom she drove too hard to master universe jumping, and that this is what led Joy to become the threatening Jobu Tupaki. They find each other in a lifeless universe as rocks and have this illuminating exchange:
Evelyn: I just feel so stupid
Joy/Jobu: God! Please. We’re all stupid! Small, stupid humans. It’s like our whole deal. For most of our history, we knew the Earth was the center of the universe. We killed and tortured people for saying otherwise. That is, until we discovered that the Earth is actually revolving around the Sun, which is just one sun out of trillions of suns. And now look at us, trying to deal with the fact that all of that exists inside of one universe out of who knows how many. Every new discovery is just a reminder-
Evelyn: We’re all small & stupid.
Joy/Jobu: And who knows what great new discovery is coming next . . . to make us feel like even smaller pieces of shit.
The classical Newtonian understanding of physical nature describes everything as obeying necessary physical laws, from planets and stars, down to rocks and trees, people and cats, all the way to the atomic and molecular level. This left no room for intrinsic value, meaning, freedom – and as I argue elsewhere – argumentation or science. In the 20th century, though, quantum mechanics provided an advance in understanding reality over classical physics by revealing that at the level of subatomic particles (e.g., quarks, mesons, charms and bosons) physical nature is inherently indeterminate, and the various outcomes of quantum events all exist superimposed on each other, until collapsing into one actualized by observation or interaction with its environment. (Of course, this is an oversimplification, and I admit, I don’t understand quantum theory well, or really very much, at all. But this is the theoretical framework, it seems to me, upon which the film EEAaO is built.) The indeterminacy of quantum states is symbolized in the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s Cat, where two possible outcomes of a quantum event results in a cat being either alive or dead, and the cat would seem to have to be paradoxically both alive and dead until it is observed.
The movie is predicated on the Many-Worlds interpretation as a solution to this paradox of quantum mechanics, where every outcome of all of our choices is realized and gives rise to an alternate universe where our lives develop in a manner different than the present one. Thus, Evelyn (and everyone else) has other lives in other universes in which she is a chef in a Japanese restaurant, a martial arts master, a famous singer, the partner to a woman in a “stupid, stupid universe where we have hotdogs for fingers,” among seemingly infinite others. Various versions of the main characters, Waymond, Diedre the IRS agent, but especially Evelyn and her daughter Joy, have learned to jump between versions of themselves in different universes, and in doing so, play out the conflict between Jobu Tupaki, who seems intent on destroying the overall reality of all universes in an Everything Bagel, and Evelyn who is told she is the only one who has the power to defeat her.
Jobu Tupaki at one point explains that her ability to pass between universes and experience everything there is to experience ultimately led to her despair, and the creation of the ultimate means of destruction, the Everything Bagel.
Jobu: Everything is just a random rearrangement of particles in a vibrating superposition . . . just a lifetime of fractured moments, contradictions and confusion, with only a few specks of time where anything actually makes any sense.
I got bored one day and put everything on a bagel. Everything. All my hopes and dreams, my old report cards, every breed of dog, every last personal ad on craigslist. Sesame. Poppy seed. Salt. And it collapsed in on itself. ‘Cause you see, when you really put everything on a bagel, it becomes this. The truth.
Evelyn: What is the truth?
Jobu: Nothing matters. . . . Feels nice, doesn’t it? If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel from making nothing of your life goes away. Sucked into a bagel.
She is saying, it seems to me, that looking for fulfillment in anything, even everything, available within the physical universe, or many, many (an infinitude of) universes, does not satisfy our infinite longing for meaning and purpose, but collapses in on itself, sucking meaning out of any of it.
As a rock in a lifeless universe, Jobu further explains:
Jobu: I’ve been trapped like this for so long…experiencing everything…I was hoping you would see something I didn’t…that you would convince me there was another way.
Evelyn: What are you talking about?
Jobu : Do you know why I actually built the bagel? It wasn’t to destroy everything. It was to destroy myself. I wanted to see if I went in, could I finally escape? Like actually die. At least this way, I don’t have to do it alone.
The indeterminacy and superposition of various quantum possibilities does not free humans from classical physics and mechanistic determinism. Rather, the realization through science that all possibilities are realized in alternate universes just means that there is another version of yourself living a better life, and that you are even more of a failure for having made the choices that trapped you in this disappointing and wasted life.
I thought this was an interesting and insightful exploration of the implications of the advance of science into barely comprehensible realms of quantum theory that continues to seemingly exclude anything non-physical beyond itself, and this results in nihilism and despair, just as much as mechanistic determinism does.
The Way Out
The second interesting feature of the film is its ultimate resolution and affirmation of something beyond the physical structure of underlying quantum features of reality. In the end, what defeats her nihilism, and pulls Joy out of the sweet release she sought in the annihilation in the Everything Bagel, is Evelyn’s free, undetermined, but self-determined decision to affirm the goodness of Joy, i.e., to love freely and selflessly.
Evelyn: And of all the places I could be, why would I want to be here with you? You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s like you said. Maybe there is some discovery out there that will make us feel like even smaller pieces of shit. Something that explains why you went looking for me through all of this noise. And why, no matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always always want to be here with you.
Jobu: So what? You’re just going to ignore everything else? You could be anything anywhere. Why not go somewhere where your daughter is more than this? Here all we get are a few specks of time where any of this actually makes any sense.
Evelyn: Then I will cherish these few specks of time.
And it is not just any self-determination that brings resolution, for Jobu Tupaki’s path of destruction was also freely chosen. But this path of selfishness and ultimate self-destruction, I think, the filmmakers and the audience recognize as intrinsically inferior, morally corrupt. Jobu is, afterall, an antagonist, a villian, not an antihero, or misunderstood victim.
Against Jobu’s nihilism and suicidal drive, Evenly adopts the way of kindness and sacrifice that her husband Waymond pursued in various lifetimes in his different alternate universes. And this is inherently and intrinsically superior, and morally virtuous.
Waymond (from the universe where Evelyn is a famous singer): You think I’m weak, don’t you? All those years ago when we first fell in love . . . your father would say I was too sweet for my own good. Maybe he was right.
Waymond (from the universe where Evelyn owns a failing laundromat and is battling Jobu Tupaki): Please! Please! Can we… Can we just stop fighting?
Waymond 1: You tell me that it’s a cruel world . . . and we’re all just running around in circles. I know that. I’ve been on this earth just as many days as you.
Waymond 2: I know you are fighting because you’re scared and confused. I’m confused, too. All day, I don’t know what the heck is going on. But somehow, it feels like it’s all my fault.
Waymond 1: When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naïve. It’s strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything.
Waymond 2: I don’t know. The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. (To Evelyn) Please. Be kind, especially when we don’t know what’s going on.
Waymond 1: I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight.
The turning point in the fight to stop Jobu comes when Evenlyn, through the sweetness and kindness of Waymond, adopts that same kindness. When the main henchman of Jobu, an especially ruthless version of Dierdre (the IRS agent in our Evelyn’s universe) threatens to block her path, they have this exchange:
Dierdre: Unlovable bitches like us make the world go round.
Evelyn: You’re not unlovable.
Dierdre : What are you talking about?
Evelyn. There is always something to love. Even in a stupid stupid universe where we have hot dogs for fingers, we get very good with our feet. (Cut to a scene of tenderness between Evelyn and Dierdre as romantic partners in the universe where people have hotdogs for fingers.)
When Evelyn embraces the absurdity of rejecting merely physical, naturalistic ways of operating, she turns bullets into googly eyes, and when Waymond asks, what are you doing? she declares,
I’m learning to fight like you.
And, I think this is inchoately Christian, for this new, better way of “fighting” is realized in the film, not merely as altruistic self-sacrifice (which every culture honors and rewards when done for certain of its members (family, clan, the state, the gods), and which has become a staple in our culture, especially in superhero movies). I think what makes it implicitly Christian (though obviously not perfectly realized) is that the self-sacrifice that “defeats” or actually redeems Jobu/Joy, and the spiral of fear and hate at the core of all physical realities, is a departure from “what makes sense” (in any universe, including the lifeless one where Jobu and Evelyn are rocks). It is an altruistic self-sacrifice for the sake of Evelyn’s enemies, an embrace in love of her daughter who rejected her and her prior attempts at love. And this kind of love of one’s enemies is at the heart of Jesus’s mission, and of the Christian life.
For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. Indeed, if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life.
This is the essence of the Christian gospel: God uses our very sins (in the cross of Jesus) as the means to redeem us from that sin and separation from Himself, and by living out that love in our lives through His grace received in faith in Jesus, we share in His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). I might be reading a little into the plot of the film, but I only think a little. I don’t know if the filmmakers thought their message was Christian – probably they didn’t. But it still may be, insofar as this ideal still lingers implicitly in the culture, even though the culture is post-Christian.
So despite the inaccurate, though oblique, reference and characterization of the Catholic Church’s unjust treatment of Galileo, and thereby failing in the main purpose of movies, the film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, makes up for these lapses by giving an entertaining and engaging depiction of the meaninglessness of a purely physical grasp of the universe, as well as a vivid and creative (and implicitly Christian) depiction of the way to overcome this meaninglessness.
For more on the Catholic understanding of what salvation means and how Jesus’s sacrifice saves us, see the following:
Thomistic Philosophy Page 