All Else is Straw

Homily for Tuesday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time

The memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas was celebrated on March 7, the anniversary of his death, for many years before the reform of the liturgical calendar. This was and is the usual custom for determining the day on which a Saint is remembered. However, since March 7 almost always falls during the Lenten Season, the memorial was moved to January 28 in order to be able to celebrate it with more than a simple commemoration. This date, January 28, is the anniversary of the translation or moving of his body from its original burial place to a church in Toulouse, France, where it is an object of veneration.

No doubt we have all heard of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, a book that is stilled widely used in the study of systematic theology. However, this extensive theological manuscript was never completed by St. Thomas. The story that tells us why also shows us of the sanctity of this great man. He was known to spend long hours in prayer, often in a seeming rapture during which no one could divert his attention from prayer. On December 6 of 1273, while he was celebrating Mass, he spent an unusually long time in quiet and undisturbed prayer. Because of what he saw in his time of prayer, he abandoned his routine and refused to dictate to his secretary Reginald of Piperno. When Reginald begged him to get back to work, Thomas replied: "Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me." He never returned to the work.

Despite his great attention to his theological treatise, he was also devoted to the Sacred Scriptures. The coincidence of the passage from St. Mark’s Gospel as we remember this great man is a happy one. Jesus proclaims that those who do the will of God are his mother and brothers and sisters. Only one other time does St. Mark speak of the will of God in his Gospel, on the occasion of the agony in the garden when Jesus prays, “Not my will, but yours be done.” Thomas had written in Part One of the Summa that the will of God was nothing more than our sanctification. This means that God desires nothing for us other than our good, and through that good our holiness. Doing God’s will is simply a matter of choosing God above all things. All else is straw.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator