The Death of St. Thomas Aquinas

 

The Death of St. Thomas Aquinas

By Fr. Jonah Teller, O.P.

It is March 7, 1274, and Thomas Aquinas is dying. He had been on the road, traveling to a Church council, when he struck his head badly on a tree branch. He tried to keep going, but illness quickly followed injury, and he was eventually taken to a Cistercian abbey. There he lies now, dying. The end is near.

The Cistercian monks gather in the room. You can imagine their reverence for their guest, undoubtedly the greatest thinker living in the entire world. He had spent his life teaching, teaching, teaching and writing, writing, writing. Eight million words is a conservative estimate of his written output in theology and philosophy—and here he is dying before reaching fifty!

Lately, though, a peculiar silence has blanketed his life. Just a few months earlier, on December 6, 1273 (as he was nearing the end of his magnum opus, the Summa Theologiae), Thomas experienced something in prayer. Returning to his room after Mass that day, he did not turn to his work as he usually did. Prompted by his assistant, Br. Reginald, he finally admitted: “Compared to what I have seen, everything I have written is as so much straw.” And so the great man kept his silence. The Summa was never completed.

Back to the Cistercian abbey. The Eucharist is brought into the room for Thomas to receive his Lord as Viaticum—food for his final journey. Veiled in the appearance of thin bread, Jesus Christ comes to Thomas. Thomas looks at Jesus. All is still. Then Thomas speaks:

I receive you, price of my soul’s redemption, receive you, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched, labored; I have preached you, I have taught you; never had I said anything against you, and if I have done so it is through ignorance and I do not grow stubborn in my error; if I have taught ill on this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I leave now this life.

It is easy to mistake Thomas Aquinas for a dry scholar, an absent-minded nerd. But he was a man fully alive. He was a man in love. As his death neared, he spoke plainly to Jesus, his dearest friend, and we are privileged to overhear
him. May we imitate him.

St. Thomas Aquinas, teacher of us all, pray for us. May we have the same sincere and open love for Jesus now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

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