St. Thomas Aquinas Memorial January 28

January 28th

Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas

Doctor of the Church

c. 1225-1274

The awareness of God is implanted
by nature in everybody. – St. John Damascene

Fr. James Kubicki, S.J.

The Apostleship of Prayer

This Saint of humility and wisdom made his greatest contribution to the Catholic Church through his writings. In The Summa Theologiae, his last and unfinished work, St. Thomas Aquinas addressed the need for a summary of the theology of the Church. He meant for this work to be “not only for the advanced but also…...to treat those things that pertain to the Christian religion in a manner suitable to the instruction of beginners.”

He stopped working on The Summa after celebrating Mass on December 6, 1273. When asked why he stopped, he replied, “I cannot go on….Because all that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.” His new understanding made it impossible to articulate in words what he had come to know about God, His Truth, and His Creation.

Five Reasons to Believe God Exists

Using Logic and Philosophy

The Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas

1. Motion – There is motion in the world. Whatever is in motion is moved by another thing. The world is in motion, and must have been put into motion by something already in motion. The first mover which put everything into motion is the unmoved mover. This unmoved mover, “put in motion by no other; everyone understands to be God.”

2. Cause – All things have a cause. It is not possible for something to be its own cause because that would mean that it existed before itself. The cause without a cause or, un-caused first cause is God. “If there be no first cause among efficient causes, then there will be no ultimate, nor intermediate cause, therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.”

3. Possibility and Necessity – There are things in this world that do exist and do not exist. Nothing can exist forever. If all things could not be, then there was a time when nothing existed. Therefore there must have been something supernatural and eternal that created us; Or else we wouldn’t be here. That supernatural and eternal “something” that created us is God. “Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having itself its own necessity and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in other their necessity. This all men speak of as God.”

4. Value – There are values to certain things in this world such as hot, hotter, and hottest. The hottest of all things cause all other things to be hot. ( Aristotle) If the maximum of a given value is the cause, “Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.”

5. Governance of the World – “Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer therefore some intelligent being exits by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.” We are all goal-oriented; just as an arrow “wants” to go to a target. But the arrow cannot go to the target without an archer. The archer launches the arrow and directs it to the target. The “archer” is God.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Pray for Us

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The 33 Doctors of the Church, Fr. Christopher Rengers, O.F.M. pg 365-387
The Summa Theologiae by St. Thomas Aquinas