Aquinas Sums Up

[poliphilo]

There's a story they tell about St Thomas Aquinas. I don't have a text to hand and I'm probably misremembering but it goes something like this. Late in life he had a direct experience of the Divine. These things are impossible to communicate. If they weren't we'd all be enlightened by word of mouth and the spiritual life would be a doddle- which it isn't.  Anyway that didn't stop the brothers from pestering him to tell them what it was that had happened to him. So he sat in his chair- he was a very large man- and he scowled and he ruminated and finally he nodded towards the massed volumes of the Summa Theologica- his life's work- one of the foundation stones of Western philosophy- and said, "Put it this way, if I'd known then what I know now I wouldn't have bothered." 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It feels true to me.

I'm reminded of what St Paul says in I Corinthians 13.

"Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away."