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This homily by Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. was given on Thursday, Jan. 27 in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception for the Catholic University of America's annual University Mass in honor of the school's patron, St. Thomas Aquinas.

About the speaker:
Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., is the Director of the Thomistic Institute and an Assistant Professor in systematic theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.L. from the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001 and was ordained a priest in 2007. He practiced law for several years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice before becoming a Dominican.

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This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute.

For more talks like this, visit us at ThomisticInstitute.org.

Thomas Aquinas in 1889, Pope Leo XIII formally established the Catholic University of America with his apostolic letter Magni Nobis Gaudi.

It's 133 years later and we are gathered here in this great basilica to honor St.

Thomas Aquinas as the patron of the Catholic University of America, and of all Catholic universities, all Catholic schools, all Catholic students.

Why should a university, why should this university, take St.

Well, there are many ways that you might answer that question, but I think there's 1 overriding truth about St.

You might call it a major theme of his life.

You might even identify it as a dimension, the core dimension of his own spirituality, if we can dare to say it.

He consecrated his life to the search for wisdom.

Now, he was a medieval Dominican friar, but in his day, he did some extraordinary things.

That included groundbreaking historical research using the best sources and best methods available to him.

Philosophical and theological disputations in the heart of the great universities of the Middle Ages, the most important places.

He was engaged in the heart of the conversation.

He commented on major works not only of theology but also of philosophy.

He set aside some of the most important hours in the most important period of his life to systematically commenting on the works of Aristotle.

He also had his own ambitious writing projects.

And he even did all this while he was charged by his superiors with important tasks of academic administration.

He was asked to start a new Dominican school of theology in Rome, and he was put in charge of the curriculum.

That's really important, actually, because that's precisely when he began writing what is often considered his greatest work, the Summa Theologiae.

I think he realized that this new school needed a revised curriculum.

But in my view, Aquinas' intellectual greatness consists not in these things, principally, or in his originality.

Often, He's less original than you might think.

He depends a lot on the insights of other people, nor on his wide-ranging research and all of that.

I think we see Aquinas' greatness most clearly in the breadth and the power of the synthesis that his mind was able to articulate, a synthesis that aims at understanding the whole.

And that, according to Aquinas, is the definition of wisdom.

The liturgy today speaks abundantly of wisdom.

I think it's the essential ingredient of his genius, that he could grasp the essence of things.

He could understand the arguments of other people, often from very diverse sources, and see how it fit together with the whole.

He even understands things that come from very, very different sources, very different traditions.

If you just look at the sources that he himself consulted and used, they include the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, the newly discovered texts of Aristotle, Jewish and Muslim thinkers, the best science of his day, sacred scripture, the church fathers, the early church councils, widely diverse views of other medieval philosophers and theologians, and much more.

But of course, the power of Aquinas' wisdom, of his synthesis, is greater than any of these parts, greater even than the sum of them, precisely because he understands them as a part of a whole, and he's able to say something about that whole, which is to say the whole of Christian wisdom.

What does he have to say to the students who are participating in this Mass, who turn to him as a guide?

He actually wrote an exhortation to his students to pursue wisdom, because he thinks that it is the mind's very purpose.

Why did God give the human creature a mind?

It's because he wants us to be able to know, to understand, and then to choose, to direct our lives towards the truth, towards the good, ultimately towards Him.

That is the purpose of the human mind, and that is the goal of any intellectual life.

In fact, it's the goal of any Christian life.

So at the start of 1 of his great works, the Summa contra Gentiles, St.

The pursuit of wisdom is more perfect, more sublime, more useful, and more joyful than all other human pursuits.

He goes on, it's more perfect because to the extent that a person devotes himself to the pursuit of wisdom, he already has a certain share of true happiness.

Through wisdom, 1 especially approaches to a divine likeness.

Since likeness is the cause of love, the pursuit of wisdom especially joins 1 to God in friendship.

Now Aquinas would be quick to add that while wisdom leads us to God, that doesn't mean that the only thing we study is, for example, the doctrines of the faith or sacred scripture, only theology, only religion.

It's very important to study those things, of course, among the most important things we could study.

But Aquinas holds that God is the source of both faith and of reason and that the human being needs both in order to come to our final end.

And these 2, the life of faith and the life of reason, are eminently compatible, completely compatible.

Ultimately, that's because God is the source of them both, and God cannot be the source of a contradiction or an error.

Thomas, the search for wisdom was not just an academic exercise.

He pursued it, of course, in a very rigorous way in the universities of his day.

Listen again to his words, exhorting his students from the opening lines of the Summa Contra Gentiles.

He writes this, therefore with trust in the divine mercy, pursuing the task of a wise man, although this surpasses my own powers, my intention is to make clear in this work, in my own small way, the truth which the Catholic faith professes, eliminating the contrary errors, so that I might make my own the words of St.

Hillary." And then he quotes him, "'I am mindful that I owe this to God as the greatest task of my life, that my every word and every thought would speak of Him." This is actually a quite extraordinary quotation from St.

If you've read much of Aquinas, you know that he almost never speaks in the first person.

He almost never reveals what's going on in his heart, you might say.

He knows that he's just a human being, but he entrusts and consecrates his life and his work to God, with the aim that every thought and every word coming from him might point to God.

Now that's actually quite extraordinary and it helps us to see that St.

Thomas is not only a man of great learning or a man with great wisdom.

And in fact, the truth, the true pursuit of wisdom can make you a saint too.

For an academic project recently, I had reason to study not only Aquinas' works, but also his life, his biography.

Thomas is a saint, but I didn't have a very strong sense of it.

But after studying his life and some of the original sources of his life, I came away with a much more profound conviction that he is not just a saint, he's 1 of the greats.

He's a man of great humility, of great love, a man of God.

There are lots of stories about His holiness that are well-attested historically, and I could recount many of them to you.

Some of them are not well-known at all, like the miracles associated with his last days and those that quickly followed his death at his place of burial.

But let me share just 1, 1 of my favorites.

It dates from when Aquinas was living at the Dominican Priory in Naples, and he was writing the questions in the Summa Theologiae on the passion and resurrection of Jesus.

Now, Aquinas was in the habit of getting up very early in the morning and praying in the chapel of St.

You can go visit that chapel in the Dominican Church in Naples.

The sacristan, whose name was Dominic of Caserta, happened to be passing by.

And he later testified that he overheard a voice speaking to St.

And it said, You've spoken well of me, Thomas.

And Aquinas' famous reply was, non nisite domine, nothing but you, Lord, nothing but you.

I love this story because it says nothing other than what Aquinas himself wrote.

Think of the quote that I read to you just a moment ago.

He wants everything to be ordered to God, to be about God.

He's not only a great figure in the history of Western thought, but he's a man whose life was consecrated to Jesus Christ and who wanted to know him and love him better more and more.

Thomas myself, that's by the way something that happened for me right here at the Catholic University of America shortly before I joined the Dominican Order, when I started studying at Qantas, I learned from him that a fruitful life of study opens the mind not only to the world around us, which of course is extremely important, But it also helps us raise the gaze of our minds to encounter the creator who is the source of the world.

The creator who became man to save us, to save you.

He raised his mind to God in just this way, and what he achieved is really inspiring.

You may know he came from a wealthy and aristocratic family.

He had the world at his feet, you might say.

But at a young age, he turned away from his parents' plans for him and joined the disreputable upstart or at least not very reputable upstart order of preaching friars, the Dominicans.

And his parents were so upset about this that they kidnapped him and held him hostage, as it were, in the family castle to stop him from making such a disastrous career decision.

Thomas didn't give in to his parents' pressure.

He didn't want to succeed according to their measure.

He wanted to follow God even more radically.

That brings us back to that theme, being a friend of God, and that's where we'll end.

Thomas writes about the apostles being the friends of Jesus.

No 1 knows the secrets of your heart unless you open your heart and speak them to another.

He shares the secrets that are in his heart with those who are his friends.

He does that first to the apostles, and then through them, He offers those secrets to you.

In fact, He's making that offer to you today, now.

It's a secret of His love for you, His desire that you would share in the knowledge He has of His Father, in the love which is the Holy Spirit.

He wants you to have the greatest possible treasure, the treasure that is hiding in the heart of Christ.

It's nothing less than the eternal life of God himself.

Aquinas is a great teacher, a great instructor, not only in academic things, but in the study of the secrets of the heart of Christ.

If you place yourself at his feet, As his student, he will guide you.

Thomas is pleased at what is happening at the Catholic University of America.

Surely he is pleased that so many of you are gathered here to honor him and to ask for his prayers for your studies.

And surely he will be pleased to intercede for us today, for this university and for all Catholic schools, for all the students, faculty, staff, friends, benefactors of these institutions.


Speaker 0: This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute. For more talks like this, visit us at ThomisticInstitute.org. On the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas in 1889, Pope Leo XIII formally established the Catholic University of America with his apostolic letter Magni Nobis Gaudi. It's 133 years later and we are gathered here in this great basilica to honor St.

Thomas Aquinas as the patron of the Catholic University of America, and of all Catholic universities, all Catholic schools, all Catholic students. Why should a university, why should this university, take St. Thomas as its special patron? Well, there are many ways that you might answer that question, but I think there's 1 overriding truth about St. Thomas.

You might call it a major theme of his life. You might even identify it as a dimension, the core dimension of his own spirituality, if we can dare to say it. He was a man who loved wisdom. He consecrated who loved wisdom. He consecrated his life to the search for wisdom.

He devoted himself to this search. Now, he was a medieval Dominican friar, but in his day, he did some extraordinary things. That included groundbreaking historical research using the best sources and best methods available to him. Philosophical and theological disputations in the heart of the great universities of the Middle Ages, the most important places. He was there.

He was engaged in the heart of the conversation. Frequent lecturing, teaching. He commented on major works not only of theology but also of philosophy. Actually, He didn't have to do that. No 1 asked him to do it.

His superiors didn't ask it of him. He set aside some of the most important hours in the most important period of his life to systematically commenting on the works of Aristotle. It's quite extraordinary. He also had his own ambitious writing projects. And he even did all this while he was charged by his superiors with important tasks of academic administration.

Hard to believe, but in fact true. He was asked to start a new Dominican school of theology in Rome, and he was put in charge of the curriculum. That's really important, actually, because that's precisely when he began writing what is often considered his greatest work, the Summa Theologiae. I think he realized that this new school needed a revised curriculum. But in my view, Aquinas' intellectual greatness consists not in these things, principally, or in his originality.

Often, He's less original than you might think. He depends a lot on the insights of other people, nor on his wide-ranging research and all of that. I think we see Aquinas' greatness most clearly in the breadth and the power of the synthesis that his mind was able to articulate, a synthesis that aims at understanding the whole. And that, according to Aquinas, is the definition of wisdom. The liturgy today speaks abundantly of wisdom.

The first reading is devoted to it. Aquinas aimed his life at wisdom. He had a marvelous capacity. I think it's the essential ingredient of his genius, that he could grasp the essence of things. He could understand the arguments of other people, often from very diverse sources, and see how it fit together with the whole.

He even understands things that come from very, very different sources, very different traditions. If you just look at the sources that he himself consulted and used, they include the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, the newly discovered texts of Aristotle, Jewish and Muslim thinkers, the best science of his day, sacred scripture, the church fathers, the early church councils, widely diverse views of other medieval philosophers and theologians, and much more. But of course, the power of Aquinas' wisdom, of his synthesis, is greater than any of these parts, greater even than the sum of them, precisely because he understands them as a part of a whole, and he's able to say something about that whole, which is to say the whole of Christian wisdom. Fine, That's about St. Thomas in the past.

What does that say to us today? What does he have to say to the students who are participating in this Mass, who turn to him as a guide? Well, I'd actually like to let St. Thomas speak for himself. He actually wrote an exhortation to his students to pursue wisdom, because he thinks that it is the mind's very purpose.

Think about that for a moment. Why did God give the human creature a mind? It's because he wants us to be able to know, to understand, and then to choose, to direct our lives towards the truth, towards the good, ultimately towards Him. That is the purpose of the human mind, and that is the goal of any intellectual life. In fact, it's the goal of any Christian life.

So at the start of 1 of his great works, the Summa contra Gentiles, St. Thomas writes this. He writes it to you. The pursuit of wisdom is more perfect, more sublime, more useful, and more joyful than all other human pursuits. He knew what he was talking about.

There's a joy waiting for you here. He goes on, it's more perfect because to the extent that a person devotes himself to the pursuit of wisdom, he already has a certain share of true happiness. Through wisdom, 1 especially approaches to a divine likeness. Since likeness is the cause of love, the pursuit of wisdom especially joins 1 to God in friendship. Friendship with God.

We'll come back to that in a moment. Now Aquinas would be quick to add that while wisdom leads us to God, that doesn't mean that the only thing we study is, for example, the doctrines of the faith or sacred scripture, only theology, only religion. It's very important to study those things, of course, among the most important things we could study. But Aquinas holds that God is the source of both faith and of reason and that the human being needs both in order to come to our final end. And these 2, the life of faith and the life of reason, are eminently compatible, completely compatible.

Ultimately, that's because God is the source of them both, and God cannot be the source of a contradiction or an error. Now, for St. Thomas, the search for wisdom was not just an academic exercise. He pursued it, of course, in a very rigorous way in the universities of his day. But it wasn't just an abstraction.

It wasn't just for the classroom. It was personal. Listen again to his words, exhorting his students from the opening lines of the Summa Contra Gentiles. He writes this, therefore with trust in the divine mercy, pursuing the task of a wise man, although this surpasses my own powers, my intention is to make clear in this work, in my own small way, the truth which the Catholic faith professes, eliminating the contrary errors, so that I might make my own the words of St. Hillary." And then he quotes him, "'I am mindful that I owe this to God as the greatest task of my life, that my every word and every thought would speak of Him." This is actually a quite extraordinary quotation from St.

Thomas. If you've read much of Aquinas, you know that he almost never speaks in the first person. He almost never reveals what's going on in his heart, you might say. But I think here we see it. He unveils to us his deepest desire.

He's aware of his limits. He knows that he's just a human being, but he entrusts and consecrates his life and his work to God, with the aim that every thought and every word coming from him might point to God. Now that's actually quite extraordinary and it helps us to see that St. Thomas is not only a man of great learning or a man with great wisdom. He's a man of great holiness.

He's a saint. And in fact, the truth, the true pursuit of wisdom can make you a saint too. For an academic project recently, I had reason to study not only Aquinas' works, but also his life, his biography. Now I never have doubted that St. Thomas is a saint, but I didn't have a very strong sense of it.

But after studying his life and some of the original sources of his life, I came away with a much more profound conviction that he is not just a saint, he's 1 of the greats. He's a man of great humility, of great love, a man of God. There are lots of stories about His holiness that are well-attested historically, and I could recount many of them to you. Some of them are not well-known at all, like the miracles associated with his last days and those that quickly followed his death at his place of burial. But let me share just 1, 1 of my favorites.

It's also rather well attested. It dates from when Aquinas was living at the Dominican Priory in Naples, and he was writing the questions in the Summa Theologiae on the passion and resurrection of Jesus. Now, Aquinas was in the habit of getting up very early in the morning and praying in the chapel of St. Nicholas. You can go visit that chapel in the Dominican Church in Naples.

The sacristan, whose name was Dominic of Caserta, happened to be passing by. And he later testified that he overheard a voice speaking to St. Thomas from the crucifix. He thought it was the voice of Jesus. And it said, You've spoken well of me, Thomas.

What would you have as your reward? And Aquinas' famous reply was, non nisite domine, nothing but you, Lord, nothing but you. I love this story because it says nothing other than what Aquinas himself wrote. Think of the quote that I read to you just a moment ago. He wants everything to be ordered to God, to be about God.

He's not only a great figure in the history of Western thought, but he's a man whose life was consecrated to Jesus Christ and who wanted to know him and love him better more and more. As a student of St. Thomas myself, that's by the way something that happened for me right here at the Catholic University of America shortly before I joined the Dominican Order, when I started studying at Qantas, I learned from him that a fruitful life of study opens the mind not only to the world around us, which of course is extremely important, But it also helps us raise the gaze of our minds to encounter the creator who is the source of the world. The creator who became man to save us, to save you. St.

Thomas Aquinas did just this. He raised his mind to God in just this way, and what he achieved is really inspiring. You may know he came from a wealthy and aristocratic family. He had the world at his feet, you might say. But at a young age, he turned away from his parents' plans for him and joined the disreputable upstart or at least not very reputable upstart order of preaching friars, the Dominicans.

And his parents were so upset about this that they kidnapped him and held him hostage, as it were, in the family castle to stop him from making such a disastrous career decision. I hope that won't happen to any of you. St. Thomas didn't give in to his parents' pressure. He didn't want to succeed according to their measure.

He wanted to follow God even more radically. And that meant being a friend of God. That brings us back to that theme, being a friend of God, and that's where we'll end. In his commentary on John's Gospel, St. Thomas writes about the apostles being the friends of Jesus.

And he says something beautiful. No 1 knows the secrets of your heart unless you open your heart and speak them to another. And who do you speak your secrets to? To your friend. Jesus opens his heart to his friends.

He shares the secrets that are in his heart with those who are his friends. He does that first to the apostles, and then through them, He offers those secrets to you. In fact, He's making that offer to you today, now. It's a secret of His love for you, His desire that you would share in the knowledge He has of His Father, in the love which is the Holy Spirit. He wants you to have the greatest possible treasure, the treasure that is hiding in the heart of Christ.

It's nothing less than the eternal life of God himself. Aquinas is a great teacher, a great instructor, not only in academic things, but in the study of the secrets of the heart of Christ. If you place yourself at his feet, As his student, he will guide you. He will guide you to Christ. Surely, St.

Thomas is pleased at what is happening at the Catholic University of America. This place placed under his patronage. Surely he is pleased that so many of you are gathered here to honor him and to ask for his prayers for your studies. And surely he will be pleased to intercede for us today, for this university and for all Catholic schools, for all the students, faculty, staff, friends, benefactors of these institutions. St.

Thomas Aquinas pray for us. Amen.

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St. Thomas Aquinas' Pursuit of Wisdom and Friendship with God | Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P.