St. Thomas wrote a very short preface to his very long (4,000-page) Summa Theologiae. In it he says he wrote his Summa “for beginners”! I too will give you a fairly short preface (though not as short as his) to tell you why I wrote this fairly long book (though not as long as his), and why “beginners” should read it.
In a lifetime of browsing through Aquinas, my amazement has continually increased not only at his theoretical, philosophical brilliance and sanity but equally at his personal, practical wisdom, his “existential bite”.
Yet this second dimension of St. Thomas has usually been eclipsed by the other. I wrote this book to help bring that sun out from its eclipse.
Since I already wrote an annotated anthology of St. Thomas’ purely rational, philosophical wisdom, Summa of the Summa, extracting it from its larger theological context of faith and divine revelation.
I here try to redress the balance with an easily digestible sample of his much larger distinctively religious wisdom.
Here are 358 pieces of wisdom from St. Thomas’ masterpiece the Summa, which are literally more valuable than all the kingdoms of this world because they will help you to attain “the one thing needful”, the summum bonum or “greatest good”, the ultimate end and purpose and meaning of life, which has many names but which is the same reality.
Three of its names are “being a saint”, “beatitude” (supreme happiness) and “union with God”. That was my principle for choosing which passages to use: do they help you to attain your ultimate end, i.e., sanctity, happiness, union with God?
St. Thomas would have agreed with Leon Bloy, who often wrote that in the end there is only one tragedy in life: not to have been a saint.
This is the same thing as attaining true happiness. St. Thomas, like Aristotle, meant by “happiness” not merely “subjective contentment” but “real perfection”, attaining the end or “final cause” o purpose of your very existence.
This is the same thing as union with God, the source of all holiness and all happiness. St. Thomas knew that union with God begins not after death but now. If this real union does not begin now, as a seed—if you are not “born again of the Spirit”—then that life cannot and will not grow, as a flower, in eternity.
This book is a selection of St. Thomas’ fertilizers to make that seed grow.
There are four kinds of fertilizer. They are the four dimensions of every religion. The word “religion” (from religare) means “a binding-back relationship”, a “tying-to”; and there are four ways every religion ties us to God, or something like God.
(These four ways are also the four parts of The Catechism of the Catholic Church.)
They are
(1) theology, (2) morality,
(3) public liturgy, and
(4) private prayer. Condensing the last two into one,
They are (1) creed,
(2) code, and
(3) cult; or
(1) words,
(2) works, and
( 3) worship; or
(1) the spiritually true,
(2) the spiritually good, and
(3) the spiritually beautiful.
They are the three ways to become a saint, the three highways to Heaven, and they all begin in the heart, for “in the heart are the highways to Zion (Heaven)” (Ps 84:5). St. Thomas was a master of all three.
The ultimate reason we must become holy is that that is the only way to become real. For becoming holy is becoming what reality ultimately is, i.e., what God, the ultimate reality and the touchstone for all reality, is: true, good, and beautiful; real, loving, and joyful.
“You must be holy because I the Lord your God am holy” was His ultimate explanation of His law to His chosen people, who were His collective prophet to the world.
