RELIGION —
In the year 1224, in a small Italian town, Theodora and Landulf gave birth to a little boy. They named him Thomas. He would become known as Thomas Aquinas, though Aquinas is not a family name but an indicator of his birthplace. As Thomas grew up, no one in Aquino would have guessed the boy would become a world renown theologian and philosopher. Because of his large size, and slowness of speech, his schoolmates nicknamed Thomas “Dumb Ox.”
To the surprise of his young friends, Dumb Ox became a Dominican friar and priest, an influential philosopher and theologian, and a prominent jurist in the Kingdom of Sicily. A prolific writer, Thomas wrote books that continue to be read by college and seminary students across the world. His best-known book, “Summa Theologiae” (Summary of Theology), became a compendium of the main theological teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. It is no surprise that the Catholic Church honors Thomas as a saint and a model teacher for anyone studying for the priesthood.
Eight hundred years later, Thomas is still considered one of the greatest Christian philosophers of all time. On his deathbed, at age 49, Thomas looked at all his books and said to his family and friends, “After what I have experienced, all that is just straw!” At the end, the wise philosopher remained astute about what really mattered.
I was intrigued by a quote attributed to Thomas in a recent speech made by Catholic Bishop Robert Barron of Minneapolis. Somewhere Thomas had written, “If we want to live a happy life we should love what Jesus loved on the cross and despise what Jesus despised on the cross.” What Jesus despised on the cross was all the objects of false worship to which, Bishop Barron explained, “we tend to erect altars — to pleasure, power, wealth and honor.” By dying on the cross, Jesus said an emphatic “No” to all those false idols that some of us worship.
And what did Jesus love on the cross? Thomas nailed it: He loved doing the will of his Father. The cross became the altar of our Lord’s ultimate sacrifice.
Satan lures us into false worship by persuading us to believe that pleasure, power, wealth and honor can provide us “a happy life.” Our dear brother Thomas invites us to take a serious look at Jesus on the cross — enduring pain not pleasure, held powerless by the nails that fastened him to the cross, tolerating the shame of nakedness, a pauper by the world’s standards and suffering the dishonor of being executed between two thieves on a cross. Yet, he yielded to the humiliation of dying on the cross because he loved doing the will of his Father.
After looking again at Jesus on that cross, my heart cries, Father, please save me from idol worship and continue transforming my heart so that soon I may wake up every morning wanting nothing more than to do your will.