Editor’s Note: On the occasion of the relic of St. Thomas Aquinas visiting the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. over Thanksgiving weekend, Dominican Father Thomas Petri offered a special votive Mass in its presence. Please find the full text of the homily below. 

 

What a great joy this is! 

When this priory, this studium, was built around 120 years ago, I’m sure none of the friars ever thought that a major relic of St. Thomas Aquinas would be present in this chapel — and not just any major relic, but his skull! Yet, in this Jubilee of St. Thomas, as we celebrate the major anniversaries of his birth, death and canonization, here it is. 

We don’t believe the body is merely incidental to who we are. St. Thomas was clear. The human person is not just a soul and not just a body. The human person is a composite of soul and body. The human soul is such that it needs a body; it’s ordered to a body: not only to learn, to remember, to think and to imagine, but to move, to communicate, to be visible, so to speak, in the world.

The soul is the form of the body. For each of us, our soul is not simply the form of some random body or any body, but of this body, of the body I have. This body, such as it is, is informed by my soul.

St. Thomas’ soul was the form of his whole body in life, the form of this skull, in life. 

Jesus Christ has revealed that we will rise from the dead on the Last Day. The body, this body, this skull, is not unimportant. It’s most important.

It’s St. Thomas’s skull and it will rise again on the Last Day. 

The “Angelic Doctor” spilled a lot of ink to argue that the resurrected body is not something new. It’s not a different body. It’s this body — the body we have in life, precisely because it’s our body and our soul that make us who we are. 

While in the beatific vision the saints have their identity, the Angelic Doctor is also clear: they are not fully themselves until they are reunited with their body at the resurrection — a body that will then be glorified in proportion to the glory of their soul now has in heaven.

So even now, the soul of St. Thomas retains its ordering to this skull and this skull is ordered to his soul.

We are so interested and devoted to the relics of the saints precisely because this ordering remains even after death until the resurrection of all the dead. 

The skull! Some parts of the body are clearly more important, more significant, than others: the face that reveals interior thoughts in so many ways; the ears that hear the preached Word; the eyes that gaze both upon Scripture and the world; the mouth that preached and taught Christ — that bellowed so loud his bellows filled the world; the brain that was made to serve a graced intellect that would teach the world and the Church, would anticipate objections and errors. His was a brain blessed with remarkable memory and imagination so to serve such a graced intellect.

But St. Thomas would not want us to focus on his relic in this Mass, not principally at least. Or rather, he would be pleased that the presence of his skull in this chapel today directs us to give worship and thanksgiving to God. 

Despite his lofty titles both in life and in death, Aquinas knew that only Christ is Rabbi, only Christ is Master and Teacher.

It was Christ whom he desired to know fully and from whom he wanted to learn. It is Christ whom he desired to preach.

Aquinas would make the prayer, lived the prayer, of the Book of Wisdom we heard this morning. Grace, understanding, wisdom: They’re not just given to us. Grace is not just given to us and then we run with it as we please. 

No. In grace, God works with us, in us and through us. In grace, the saint and God work together, completely and never apart. 

The Wisdom of Solomon prays:

“God grant I speak suitably and value these endowments [these gifts] at their worth: For he is the guide of Wisdom and the director of the wise. For both we and our words are in his hand …”

 St. Augustine once noted, “Even the one that learns everything — when the moment comes to speak, even he should remember that what the Lord says is more fitting than all his valid arguments. Do not worry about what you are to say.” Both we and our words are in God’s hands.

At the heart of Aquinas’ life was this realization: Grace is the central catalyst, the prime mover if you will, of the spiritual, intellectual and pastoral life. The resurgence of study and devotion to St. Thomas Aquinas in these last 75 years or so is no doubt due to his humility and charismatic genius. 

He would undoubtedly shy away from these words of praise. Once writing on the Blessed Mother’s genius because she was full of grace, St. Thomas noted of her, and we can say the same of him: “To a humble mind nothing is more astonishing than to hear of its own excellence.”

In the midst of this Jubilee of the Angelic Doctor, then, it is fitting and wonderful that his skull should come to us. In this house, in this studium, our formation and devotion to Aquinas is manifest. We want to preach Christ to a world mired in confusion, wrong-headedness, sin and error. 

Not only do we need the teaching of Aquinas, we need even more than that, because he’s more than that — he’s more than a teacher, more than a preacher, more than the common doctor of the Church. 

He’s a saint, and he’s our brother.

He prays for us, and we thrive with his intercession through which our life can be rightly ordered, our understanding might be full, and our preaching fruitful in the hope that we might not only bring the world to Christ but one day we might rejoice with Aquinas himself, body and soul, in the sight of God forever and ever.