Death of St. Thomas Aquinas 750 Years Ago Today: His Eucharistic Testament
Editor’s Note: The following homily was preached on the evening of March 6th at St. Dominic’s Church in Washington, D.C. It is reprinted here with permission marking the 750th anniversary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ death.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
— Colossians 3:12-17
St. Thomas lay dying at Fossanova. After confessing his sins and receiving absolution, he readied himself to receive his Eucharistic Lord as he formulated his last testament:
“I receive you, price of my soul’s redemption. I receive you, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched and labored. I have preached you. I have taught you. Never have I said anything against you, and if I have done so, it is through ignorance, and I am not stubborn in my error. If I have taught wrongly concerning this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I now leave this life.”
We find ourselves at the culmination of St. Thomas’ life. But how did he come to this moment? What led him here? As his biographers recount, St. Thomas had fallen ill in the midst of one of his many journeys. He had been called to the Second Council of Lyons to address the wounds of a divided Church. With his Contra Errores Graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks) in hand, he set out in early 1274 from southern Italy to arrive in time for the May gathering. But this journey would ultimately prove too much for him, for even before he had set out, he was already fading.
A man given to contemplation, St. Thomas was known for his abstraction, even his reveries, but something had happened as of late that distanced him further from this present life. Since the end of the following year, he had been drifting. One episode seems to have been largely responsible. On the feast of St. Nicholas, after the celebration of the Holy Mass, St. Thomas beheld a vision. In that mystical encounter, he saw something — saw someone. In what transpired, he drew closer to heaven than ever before. In the weeks that followed, he found himself somehow less on earth. He ceased to dictate the Summa Theologiae, though he was only midway through the treatment on the sacraments. “I can do no more,” he said. “Everything I have written seems to me as straw in comparison with what I have seen.”
Some authors suggest this pronouncement shows that St. Thomas saw his work as meaningless, erroneous and that this moment signaled the capitulation of a broken man. That’s unlikely, as he didn’t ask for his works to be corrected or to be burned. He simply showed little interest in further elaboration. His studies, his labors, his night watches weren’t worthless; they were simply coming to an end.
