'A Beautiful Mind'

By Monica Perry

The weather, fashion, and Canucks' games are all suitable topics for polite conversation. The truth is not. Say something is true and you will be considered simplistic at best. More likely you will be thought uncharitable.

After all, if you argue that something is true, you may end by contradicting the opinion of someone with whom you are speaking. Though you do not intend your speech to be a personal attack, it will be taken as such because it will appear that you are trying to change someone's opinion. This opinion is something to which he or she will consider themselves entitled. Try and take it away and you will be regarded as an audacious thief.

If St. Thomas Aquinas is right, however: conversations about superficial topics will leave all of us feeling unfulfilled. The truth is what we were made for (thinking beings that we are) and our true happiness depends on the fulfilment of this purpose. Frustration of purpose is the opposite of happiness.

There's more to what St. Thomas says, a whole Summa Theologica more, and then some. This truth that will make us happy has a name. Actually it has many names, though still one truth. Its name is "Yahweh" or "God." Truth communicated to us is called by the name, "Word," or "Christ." The impulse towards truth in our hearts we call "Holy Spirit."

Used as we are to calling God, "Love," we do not often call Him "Truth." Many people, even if they admit the importance of truth, would say that it has nothing to do with religion. What we believe is separate from what we can know. The natural consequence of this attitude is to make faith irrelevant in our lives. Our thinking nature must ultimately rebel at being asked to believe nonsense.

St. Thomas's great gift to the Church was to engage in mortal combat the notion that faith and reason are not related. God is not only relevant in our life, but we were given a brain with the primary purpose of knowing Him Who gave it to us.

My mother taught me to believe in God. Reading Thomas in university caused my jaw to drop in amazement at this God in Whom I had been taught to believe. My mother taught me: "God made me to know, love, and serve Him, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven." Thomas whet my appetite for the feast. "Taste and see the goodness of the Lord."

Fortunately it is possible to read Thomas outside a university setting (though it is my fondest wish that my children will have an opportunity to study Thomas as I did). I remind my teens that if they have a question about their faith, it is likely that St. Thomas asked it before they did.

Finding a thorough answer to their question may be as easy as a "google" search of the topic and the name, "Thomas Aquinas." The trick to understanding what they find will be to read carefully what Thomas actually says, and not what somebody else says he says.

A professor of mine used to encourage us to marvel at the language Thomas used. "Every word means something," he would boom out in his enthusiasm.

I have no patience with jargon. Because the definition of the words used is arbitrarily determined by the author, I find jargon very difficult to understand. Even if the author included a dictionary of the terms he was creating, I suspect my intellect would be unequal to the task of unscrambling the gobbledygook (a carefully chosen term.)

I can, however, read St. Thomas, though there are many who would understand more of the text than I would. I'm not saying it's easy, but each word has been painstakingly chosen to convey the idea for which it was originally intended.

Thomas's writings present reality; they don't attempt to create it. Anyone can grapple with the truth. Don't ask me to understand something someone is making up.

When Pope John Paul II was first chosen Pope, he was reportedly asked if he was a Thomist. "How can a Pope not be a Thomist?" was his reply.

How can anyone not be a Thomist, I would propose.

In the prologue to the Summa, Thomas says his work is intended for the beginner in the study of Catholic dogma. Quoting St. Paul, he indicates his intention to give us little ones in Christ "milk to drink, not meat."

I am one of those beginners, only capable of digesting milk.

Thomas was truth's good and humble servant, following its direction methodically and untiringly. As with all saints, it was his charity that opened the gates of heaven to him, a charity that will continue to free men of good will from the slavery of error until that day when the veil of the temple will be drawn aside: "Now we see through a glass dimly, but then face to face."

If St. Thomas Aquinas is for me, then he is for everyone. Mine is a simple mind, yet still capable of delighting in Thomas's beautiful one.

His feast day is Jan. 28. Happy feast day!