St. Thomas Day Homily: “We and Our Words are in His Hand”

Receive TAC Lectures via Podcast!

By Rev. Michael Sherwin, O.P.
Professor of Fundamental Moral Theology
University of Fribourg
Homily from St. Thomas Day 2022 (transcript)

God is the guide of wisdom and the director of the wise; for both we and our words are in His hand, as well as all prudence (phronesis) and knowledge of crafts.

We live in interesting and difficult times. On this Feast of St. Thomas, it is perhaps interesting for us to think about the fact that he, too, lived in difficult times. When he arrived from his family’s castle at Roccasecca — which is almost exactly midpoint between Naples and the domains of Emperor Frederick and the Vatican and the domains of the papal states — when he left his castle and went to Monte Cassino, Monte Cassino was in shambles, having only recently been sacked because of the ongoing wars between Fredrick and his party and the Pope and his party.

He was five years old, sent there as an oblate to study, to learn the trivium, learn Latin, and to — as Benedict said — to listen as he prayed the Psalms and heard the Scriptures of the Church. He would stay there almost 10 years, and then have to flee, because the Emperor expelled almost all of the monks at that point from Monte Cassino, that incredible stronghold that was in his way. So the Abbot sent Thomas back to his family, encouraging them to send him to the new, young vibrant University of Naples, founded by Frederick explicitly for the study of Greek wisdom, especially Aristotle. And so Aquinas starts his study of Aristotle.

None of this could have been foreseen, but it would have consequences for all of us. For we and our words are in His hand. It is not an exaggeration to say that, although Frederick was pursuing one thing, and the Pope was pursuing something else, the Lord, —Whose providence is over all — was setting in place an educational formation for Thomas that has directly led to our presence here today.

Naples was one of the few places in Europe where Aristotle could be taught legally at that time. (He wasn’t legally being studied in Paris.) But Thomas could study him there and encounter the friars preachers.

I want to jump now, on this feast, to a later period in Thomas’ life, a period that we know very little about, 1260-61. By this time Thomas is becoming famous. He has already had the success of his first regency in Paris. He has been asked to set up a studium generale in his home, the city of his mother tongue (his mother is a Neapolitan), to set up a studium in Naples, this great, vibrant intellectual center, and it’s going to be a personal studium. He is now at the peak of the academic career.

But in 1260-61 the general chapter sends him away from there and assigns him to a backwater that has a community that barely has enough friars for a priory, Orvieto — pretty, but nothing was there. He passes from being a master at his own studium generale to being a house lector. Thomas could have refused; he wouldn’t have been the first. But he obeys, gives up what some would say was a blossoming academic career to teach people, as a lector, who were not scholars, but who were simple preaching friars.

Things could have ended there, but we and our words are in the hand of God. No one could have foreseen, but the newly elected pope, for strategic military reasons, moves the papal court — you guessed it — to Orvieto. This means several things. The first thing it means for Thomas is that the papal library, which was peripatetic in those days, arrives at Orvieto, with all the Greek manuscripts of the fathers in the Church. Aquinas immediately starts reading them. Other people arrive — Hugh of Saint-Cher, one of the great scholars of the age, a confrere of Thomas, not in good health, he’s kind of the papal theologian. “Oh yes, OK, Thomas, you can take over my job.” So Thomas shifts from being simply a house lector to being the new Pope’s theologian. Albert the Great, who has just successfully resigned from his episcopal charges, he’s there, and lives in community with Thomas. Thomas now finds himself in a priory full of some of the greatest minds of the age, with the best library in the world — and it gets better.

During that time he writes the Summa Contra Gentiles, he starts working on the Catena Aurea, and then the Pope assigns him a project that was dear to his heart: The Feast of Corpus Christi.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Aquinas’ words are — every day, almost everywhere in the world — sung in large numbers or in small groups, part of God’s Eucharistic presence, the fruit of that humble acceptance of what the world judges as failure. The assignation that assigned him said that he was to leave Naples and go to Orvieto for the remission of his sins. It’s boilerplate; it may be used all the time. Maybe he wasn’t very good as an administrator — we have no idea why he was sent there. But the fruit of his obedience, the fruit of his failure, touches each of our lives almost daily. God’s providence.

One of our friars has a nephew who had — for a bright, shining moment — a role in the inner sanctum of the Polish government. He told his uncle — I met him at that time; he was very full of himself at that time — but he told his uncle later, “When we arrived in government, when we arrived in power, we thought we were now going to control everything and change everything, and we spent from day one reacting to things.” And he said, “I quickly learned that we were not in charge, that someone else was in charge, and it was a very good thing.”

Then he had a spectacular electoral reversal. He’s thrown out of office, the lowest nadir of his life, and he discovers that it was the greatest grace that he could have received. Had he been reelected, he would have been, with his wife, on the plane that crashed in Russia. He would have died, and his children would all have been orphans.

For we and our words are in the hand of God.

Thomas lived that providence; he lived for that providence. There’s rarely been a saint who is more — what shall we say? — discreet in his use of the first-person singular. Almost never does he use it in his writings. Sometimes to illustrate a logical point, or to say that he once held a wrong view. He doesn’t reveal himself. The exact opposite of someone like Augustine, who celebrates God’s mercies through him, using the Ego all the time. Or Thérèse, who in heaven is constantly coming back to earth to celebrate God’s love. Thomas is very discreet. Thomas hides his self, but he has left us his words.

For both we and our words are in His hand.

It is because of that dedication to which we are all called, which is celebrated in our gospel today, to not hide our light under a bushel basket, but let it shine for all.

This institution, dedicated to his name, dedicated to his methods, and dedicated to his words, perhaps on his feast day would invite us to meditate on the providential mystery of Thomas’ life and apply it to our own lives. We can never know, from day to day, what effect our words will have on others; how they might change the course of a student’s life, or a fellow student’s life, or even a professor’s life — yes, sometimes, we actually do listen to our students. And they change us. We learn from our students. We can never know how our failures will bear fruit in time, perhaps more than our successes, how we will spend eternity thanking even our enemies for the good they have done us in God’s providence.

Without the mishaps at Monte Cassino, no Thomas Aquinas College. Without the conflicts between Frederick and the Pope, no Feast of Corpus Christ.

We can, therefore in these troubled times, rest assured that God’s providence is over all, and that the study of St. Thomas and the Great Books of the West — and learning how to reason and think — the Lord will put this, this light, this food that has been rightly salted, to good use, to nourish our contemporaries and future generations.

So Thomas would have us remember that God — for we and our words are in the hand of God — for His wisdom knows and has all prudence and knowledge of crafts.

Rev. Michael Sherwin, O.P., was the 2022 St. Thomas Day lecturer at Thomas Aquinas College, New England. In researching this homily, he consulted Thomas Aquinas: A Historical, Theological, and Environmental Portrait, by Donald S. Prudlo (2020, Paulist Press).

Receive lectures and talks via podcast!