#st. thomas aquinas church

[getoutofthisplace]

Dear Gus & Magnus,

We had a 12-hour shoot today for a script I wrote of a cooking show spoof. I spent most of the day trying not to eat the pastries on set. It was a long day, but I think it's going to be a solid video. I can't wait to see what it looks like on screen. Driving home tomorrow.

Dad.

Wichita, Kansas. 1.25.2023 - 5.33pm.

[ranminfan]

St. Thomas Aquinas, Doctor Angelicus

Dominican friar, philosopher and theologian. To think he was set to become a Benedictine abbot, instead he joined the unlikely poor friars of the Dominicans to become part of the radical mission in preaching the word of Christ.

.

I was not as familiar with this St. Thomas back then, but now knowing a lot more, I'm becoming so fond of him and his life.

[momentsbeforemass]

Not fit to hate

People ask where I get the stuff that I write about.

I pray with the daily Mass readings. Then I read commentaries. Mostly InterVarsity’s “Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.”

The series gives you a few sentences to a paragraph on each verse. That someone wrote during the first 500+ years of the Church.

Maybe from someone famous, or someone not so famous. Sometimes nobody knows who wrote it. But always the good stuff, stuff that’s stood the test of time.

Like this one, on today’s Gospel (where Jesus says to “love your enemies”). It’s an anonymous work* from the 5th century, that reads like it was written this morning.

“I think that Christ ordered these things [to love our enemies] not so much for our enemies as for us: not because our enemies are fit to be loved by others, but because we are not fit to hate anyone.

For hatred is the prodigy of dark places. Wherever it resides, it sullies the beauty of sound sense.

Therefore, not only does Christ order us to love our enemies for the sake of cherishing them, but also for the sake of driving away from ourselves what is bad for us.

If you hate [your enemy], you have hurt yourself more in spirit than you have hurt him in the flesh.

Perhaps you don’t harm him at all by hating him. But you surely tear yourself apart. If then you are benevolent to an enemy, you have spared yourself rather than him.”

(* Known as the Incomplete Work on Matthew, St. Thomas Aquinas was so fond of it that he once said that he would rather have the complete work than be mayor of Paris.)

Today’s Readings

[anastpaul]

(via One Minute Reflection – 5 November – “They shall see God.” – Matthew 5:8 – AnaStpaul)

[natequarter]

it's a bit hard to identify name trends as such in the past, but the first half of the 1500s definitely had a thomas surge, right? there were so many fucking thomases

[jameslmartello]

Light in Biology: A Molecular Perspective | Prof. Matthew Wohlever

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[catholic-saint-tournament]

St. Joan of Arc obvi. St. Sebastian for most iconic death. St. Anthony be he is truly the most helpful saint tbh. St. Thomas Aquinas, you've got to have him with how deep he's got his dirty mitts in Catholic theology. St. Peter bc I'm pretty sure he insisted on being crucified upside down bc he felt he was unworthy of dying the same way as Jesus which is so.... Also St. Augustine, again very necessary with how much theologians simp for him. Anyway that's all I have for now

St Joan of Arc, St Sebastian, St Anthony, St Thomas Aquinas, St Peter, and St Augustine all have at least a few votes so I expect everyone's making it to the final bracket!

LOL @ Thomas Aquinas with his dirty mitts in Catholic theology. It's so true.

And Augustine - how much the theologians simp for him. KIND of true, I suppose. Your dear mod is a theologian and while I like Augustine well enough, he's not my main guy. :)

[proud-spaniard]

347x486 Santo Tomás de Aquino

[solnunquamoccidit]

[austerity-audacity-asceticism]

The atomic habits of St. Therese of Lisieux

I used to be one of those people that were like “oh I love St. Joan of Arc, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Paul, St. Teresa of Avila” because I thought they were Cool and Heroic and they did Big Things

And whenever someone would talk about “The Little Flower of Lisieux” I was like “mehhhhh… okay”

Not in a way that was totally disrespectful, but not totally aware of the enormity of her interior life

Because guys

Wow

You’d have to read The Story of the Soul to really appreciate just WHY she is a doctor of the Church

(She’s the Doctor of Divine Love, btw)

Because St. Therese? She was in the details

They like to say the devil is in the details, but let’s face it— God is in the details, and in his mercy and wisdom, he placed St. Therese there for us to learn from and imitate in our own ways

She had to reconcile her great desire to be a saint with the enormous legacies of the saints that came before her, especially Joan of Arc and St. Teresa of Avila

(She, along with St. Joan, are the patron saints of France. I’m sure that’s something St. Therese never dreamed of)

And she had the realization that God would not have given her a desire that she was incapable of, and that there must be a way for someone “as small as her” to become a great saint

Which lead her to meditate on Mathew 18:4 (Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven)

And she was like “oh, okay. This desire planted into my heart is an invitation to become a little child, because the Lord wants to be the one to carry me to Heaven” 

(I am heavily paraphrasing so that you guys won’t be spoiled for Story of a Soul. Go read it!!!)

All of this is to say that her writings and her life reflect a simple but profound theology 

The Little Way is one of total dependence on the providence of God, of total surrender and self-mortification— the emptying of the cup of one’s self little by little, so that the Lord can fill it with his graces and abundance, and ultimately, with His own divine self 

The Little Way is one of the smallest acts of radical love, because the only person who needs to see it is God 

The Little Way is St. Therese going out of her way to nurse the nuns that she didn’t get along well with 

The Little Way is St. Therese is doing her best to hold cheerful conversations with a particularly surly nun 

The Little Way is St. Therese relishing being splashed with dirty laundry water as a sign of the smallest of suffering that only God would see

I called this particular post her “atomic habits,” because she believed that small acts can lead to holiness when done with great love for our Lord 

Small acts of love and self mortification were the things that she sought for while in the Carmel 

St. Therese elucidated in her signature sincere and effervescent style the enduring idea that there is no suffering too small, no act of love too small, to offer the Lord— because what he wants is souls, what he wants is us

That’s not to say that her interior life was always rich 

She suffered so much from months of aridity that she grew an affection for atheists, even going so far to say, and I quote:

[God] allowed my soul to be overwhelmed with darkness, and the thought of Heaven, which had consoled me from my earliest childhood, now became a subject of conflict and torture. This trial did not last merely for days or weeks; I have been suffering for months, and I still await deliverance. I wish I could express what I feel, but it is beyond me. One must have passed through this dark tunnel to understand its blackness ... When I sing of the happiness of Heaven and the eternal possession of God, I do not feel any joy therein, for I sing only of what I wish to believe. Sometimes, I confess, a little ray of sunshine illumines my dark night, and I enjoy peace for an instant, but later, the remembrance of this ray of light, instead of consoling me, makes the blackness thicker still.

It’s thought that St. Therese experienced this interior anguish up until the end of her battle with tuberculosis, with her final words being: “My God, I love you!” 

To summarize everything, reading St. Therese is a study not only of radical love, but also radical humility 

From a spoiled child to a martyr of the Carmel, St. Therese lived an inner life that very few of her own sisters in the convent were aware of 

Her life is also a testimony to God's perfect timing; St. Therese wanted to be a missionary in Hanoi, but was prevented from doing so when she contracted tuberculosis. She was later named a patron saint to missionaries.

St. Therese's Little Way informed the spirituality of many of the saints and intellectuals that came after her: St. Josemaria, St. John Paul II, Mother Teresa, St. Teresa of the Andes, Blessed Cecilia Eusepi, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Dorothy Day

On her feast day, let’s take the time to reflect on what small things we can do today for the Lord; what small sufferings we can offer him with great love and humility 

God would never inspire me with desires which cannot be realized; so in spite of my littleness, I can hope to be a saint. — St. Thérèse of Lisieux

St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for us.

[autumnhobbit]

me when i first saw the headline: 😳

me after reading the story: ……free my man he did nothing wrong

[momentsbeforemass]

What do you want?

“What do you want?”

It’s a question that says a lot about us, based on how we answer it.

Sometimes we answer with stuff. Sometimes we answer with experiences. Sometimes we answer with relationships.

Sometimes it just depends on how we’re feeling at the moment.

There’s all kinds of advice on how to answer the “What do you want?” question.

A lot of that advice is along the lines of Nora Roberts��� famous line, “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”

It’s not bad advice. Provided you know what matters. Provided you’re not mistaking things that pass away for the eternal.

Like the mother of James and John. When she gets asked “What do you want?” in today’s Gospel.

There’s no doubt that she loves her sons. But she’s stuck on the things that pass away. Status. Prestige. Stuff like that. Or maybe she just doesn’t realize that it’s God who’s asking.

Either way, she focuses on the baubles of this age. And wastes the moment.

Because there’s only answer worth giving. Especially when God’s doing the asking.

There’s a beautiful moment in the life of St. Thomas Aquinas.

After writing on the Eucharist, Thomas hears God saying to him,

“You have written well of me, Thomas. What reward would you have?”

And Thomas gives the only answer worth giving.

“Nothing but You, Lord. Nothing but You.”

Today’s Readings

[sancta-seraphina]

Hi, I hope this isn't too complex a question. What books would you recommend for someone looking to get into angels? I'm looking for anything... lore, other novels to read, comics, whatever you can offer

Oh man, please don't apologize, this is exactly my type of question! Also this post got a bit long.

Obviously, there are tons of references for lore. If you're looking for a basic run-down of angels in the Bible itself, I'm writing a series of posts on that subject specifically, even if updates are few and far between right now (I'm so, so sorry, the ballet eats all of my time):

[Biblically Accurate Angels Part I - Seraphim, Cherubim & Ophanim]

[Biblically Accurate Angels Part II - The Named Angels]

This is because the easiest and most accessible information on angels is in the Bible itself (and hey guess what—you can read the Bible for free online! If you need a translation suggestion, I would go for the ESV bibles, and there's a Catholic edition of the ESV if that's an issue. You could also get the NCB which is what I cited)

If you don't mind chewy literature, then I'd say please read Pseudo-Dionysius' De Coelesti Hierarchia, or St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. I cite both of these in my posts on angels since they're rather standard sources of information on them, and they're also where the Catholic church gets its canon from.

A great reference, even if I don't particularly agree with everything stated in it, is Gustav Davidson's A Dictionary of Angels. Most people look at it for angel names, but I'm very interested in his sources, since many of them I've not yet managed to get my little paws on.

I'm not even going to get into my favorite sources of angel lore because this is enough for someone just looking to start. I can do a separate post on those if people want them.

Now. Moving on from lore.

For classic literature, my two obvious recommendations are for The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. Over on IG, myself and Jami (@a-thenais) made a little book recommendation post. [You can find it here]. Being the angels nerds we are, everything is pretty on theme and has poetry, scripture, classics... the only thing we didn't do is current angel literature.

So for that, if you want a popular series, than I'd say go take a look at @nicosraf's Angels trilogy, especially since he just announced a new short novel coming out in December!

I personally also like @marsadler's First Creation, although I'd recommend his works mainly for horror fans.

And lastly, if you don't mind waiting/are keeping a list of angel books that are coming out, well, of course I'd suggest my own series [The Divine Tragedy], even if horror isn't everyone's cup of tea. The main series (Holiest, The Harrowing, & Heresiarch) and the series of novellas (The Infernal Apocrypha) are heavy on the horror, but in my last project, the Sepher Metatron, only the third part has horror in it, and the rest of it is more palatable to non-horror fans (the very first part of the book is also fully illustrated)

But if you can read Italian, then I'd also suggest @a-thenais' Nova Apocrypha Vulgata series! These are three novels (Thanatos, Hybris, & Afasia) that she is working towards publishing, and a few additional works too. You can read about them on her tumblr, and I've done multiple fanarts for them. We also tend to consider TDT and NAV 'twins', so if TDT is something you want to read, NAV will also something you'd probably like!

If you want to follow some angel artists, then please check out my pals @ultrainfinitepit (who makes gorgeous angel pins which I hoard) and @helplessavacado, both of whom have their own unique styles and stories as well.

[jameslmartello]

The last prophecy of St. Thomas Aquinas before he died 750 years ago | Catholic News Agency

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