46: The Secret Life of Thomas Aquinas

you're listening to the Taylor Marshall show episode 46 the secret life of st. Thomas Aquinas today we sit down and talk about one of my favorite Saints Thomas Aquinas and some of the lesser-known details of his life plus much more all coming up in this week's episode hi this is Greg Willits from the Catholics next door podcast at Greg and Jennifer comm and this is Jennifer will it's his wife and you are listening to the Taylor Marshall show you are about to listen to a podcast from one of the smartest men in Catholic media dr. Taylor Marshall take it away Taylor howdy and thank you for tuning in to the Taylor Marshall show this is the podcast for everyone who wants to create daily habits and learn enough theology to take their faith to the next level and my goal this week is to introduce you to the Secret Life of st. Thomas Aquinas now it's not really a secret if you know where to look but Thomas Aquinas is one of the better known Saints you know almost all Catholics know the name Thomas Aquinas even a lot of Protestants know Saint Thomas Aquinas but very few people know anything about his life so today we're gonna look at the story of his life from infancy all the way til his death so it's gonna be a great show and I want to begin by thanking Greg and Jennifer Willis for that great shout out we just played at the beginning of this episode Greg and Jennifer Willits you may know them from Catholic podcasting you know Greg is like The Godfather of Catholic podcasting with a great grandfather of Catholic podcasting he and his wife Jennifer they have you probably know them from the Catholic next door or you know the rosary army they've produced tons of content in the podcasting realm so if you don't listen to their podcast go ahead and check them out search form in iTunes and you'll be pleased what we'll begin this week with our proverb of the week and this week's proverb is proverbs chapter 27 verse 5 it's a short one goes like this quote better is open rebuke then hidden love end quote better is open rebuke then hidden love now most of us don't like to be rebuked we don't like to be corrected and we all want to be loved so how is this proverb make any sense well of course the key are the two terms open and hidden letters open rebuke then hidden love if you're a wise person if you're prudent if you're trying to become a saint you're on the path of virtue it's better to have someone openly correct you they had to let you go blindly on your way likewise hidden love is the worst kind some of us you know you may have grown up with a parent mother or father maybe a grandparent who never said I love you who never showed you any affection and that is that is tough I was on the internet reading about a guy the other day who said that he grew up with his dad who he thought his dad hated him and he said it was like being in a sane asylum just this idea that his dad's favor his dad's love his dad's blessing was never upon him and so I think from this vantage point we can see that it's better to have open rebuke right we don't want passive aggressive behavior it's better just for someone to say hey look when you do this it's not quite right can you please do it this way right that's the best way as as opposed to well you know I noticed that so-and-so does it this way and there's so much better at doing it this way and maybe you should think about doing it that way just be open about it and then also with our love it must not be hidden it must be given alright so there it is proverbs chapter 27 verse 5 bettors open rebuke then hidden love well let's get right into our featured segment this week The Secret Life of st. Thomas Aquinas I want to say he's my favorite Saint but I don't know it's kind of a close one you know I love although of course there's our lady she's the queen of the Saints and then of course there's Saint Joseph he's you know big in my life I have a great devotion also to to st. George my patron saint is st. John the Apostle I chose him as my confirmation Saint because he was so close to the sacred heart of jesus at the last supper at the Eucharist and that's where I want to be and also as you know st. John cared for the Blessed Virgin Mary after Christ ascended into heaven and I wanted to be close to Our Lady so I chose st. John but with you know george john joseph and thomas aquinas these are my my closest friends in heaven and these are the Saints that I have the greatest devotion to and so I wanted to share the life of Thomas Aquinas and some of the things that many people don't know about Thomas Aquinas but are extremely interesting now Thomas Aquinas was a medieval guy he was born in the year 1225 1225 and unlike most of us he was born in a castle his family was very well-to-do and his quote unquote last name Aquinas is it's not really a last name it relates to where he came from and he was born about eight kilometers from a Quino in Italy so that's where we get the name Thomas it's literally Thomas of Aquino or in English we say Thomas Aquinas now his father was the count of aquino and his mother was the Countess of feat I don't know if I'm saying that properly or not the8 ee leave a comment if I got it wrong I'm sure I did I don't know where the accent goes in there and I've never encountered it before and Thomas Aquinas through his parents was part of the nobility he was related to the the current dynasty of that day of the Holy Roman Emperor and he was related to the infamous emperor Frederick Barbarossa that's a whole nother story the the emperor Frederick Barbarossa is quite a character but we can see that Thomas is running in these circles of nobility he's in Italy but he's related to these great European dynasties now as a young man his family began to prepare him and groom him and by the way this is I want to take a little sidestep here we as as parents Christian parents need to intentionally prepare and groom our children for greatness it's not enough to just birth them into the world and buy them some books we need to groom our children and our grandchildren for greatness to become the movers and shakers of the next 100 years we must be very intentional about this we must invest in their education invest in their cultivation invest of course and their faith and their spiritual development but we need to think like we say at the end of the podcast you know we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth go out there and be salty we need to be salty and that's not just something spiritual of something mental something physical as our Lord says that we must love the Lord our God with all of our mind soul and strength right center of our mind and our strength our whole person so Thomas's family did this for him they began to cultivate his natural abilities and as Thomas Aquinas later taught grace perfects nature so God takes What's in us naturally and he perfects it he takes what's there in our human nature and he elevates it and heals it and perfects it that's how God works so his parents began to cultivate his his natural gifts obviously an intellectual gift and they saw him as a religious young boy as a pure boy as chaste as a young man with great ideas and and just an impressive intellect and so they wanted to place him in the highest religious post of that time which was to become the abbot of Monte Cassino now Monte Cassino was the mother ship the mother house of all the monasteries in Europe this is where the Benedictine Order has its headquarters Saint Benedict established his first monastery here and so all the world's Benedictine monasteries looked upon this abbey as its as their spiritual center or their spiritual capital and to be the abbot of Monte Cassino is a big deal I mean it's kind of like being the Pope of all the monks now mind you the Franciscan friars and the Dominicans are just beginning to get started at this time no one even really knows about them except for you know those who come across them but you know no one says I want to be a Franciscan or Dominican because they're brand-new orders so the Benedictine way of life was the way of monasticism and of religious vows in Europe at time of course there's exceptions like the are the Augustinians but to be the abbot that Monte Cassino was a big deal and Thomas's parents said you know what our boy is smart enough he's good enough and doggone it he's going to be that so they began to position him for that spot now his uncle Thomas's uncle named Cinna bald was the abbot of Monte Cassino so it was a great way to transition the young man in to this role because there's already a family member who held the abbacy at Monte Cassino and Thomas's father had every intention of ensuring that this boy would succeed his brother in becoming the abbot of this great monastery a very prestigious position at this time in Europe you know maybe even like I don't know I'd have to ask a medieval historian but it's almost like being number two to the Pope by the amount of authority you had by the amount of land and influence you had in the church it's a big deal now at this time Thomas began his education and there's this famous legend it's hard to verify that Thomas was a very silent and quiet boy he was large as you know he was a big even from his youth he was big and people assumed that because he didn't speak and he was big that he was kind of a stupid giant right kind of a big lug who didn't have much upstairs you know maybe he was destined for sports rather than the chess team that was the impression that people had and at this time one of his classmates it's hard to know if this was when he was younger or when he has more in his teens said look Thomas look outside there's a pig flying outside commonlook come see and thomas aquinas you know the big boy he got up and he jumped over to the window and he looked outside and all the boys laughed at Thomas Aquinas says Oh Thomas you're so stupid you think pigs can really fly and Thomas Aquinas replied I would rather believe that pigs can fly then that my own Christian brothers would have I to me end quote so we see here sort of a guileless pure boy who's willing to believe out of charity of course pigs don't fly but he would rather have charity towards his friends and believe them even on something ridiculous than to assume that they were Elias so this is an important little anecdote from the life of Thomas Aquinas now also in Thomas's teenage years strife broke out between Pope Gregory the 9th and the Emperor Frederick and this was leading to war and since the house of Aquinas was related by blood to Frederick Thomas's parents relocated the young man to the University of Naples now why is this important well it's hard to become the abbot of Monte Cassino if you're seen as politically aligned with the enemy of the Pope right so his parents were very careful about this and he was kind of moved out of the way moved out of harm's way and brought down to Naples now this is really important and this is this is where you see God's providence in his power working through time because Naples at that time was an academic I don't want to say this not liberal like we think of like Berkeley in California but it was a controversial academic environment and Naples was being a little bit fast and loose and not necessarily obeying the church's decrees on curriculum and what was taught in particular the University of Naples was exposing younger students to the teaching of drumroll Aristotle Aristotle was becoming more and more popular the church for good reason was worried about the teaching of Aristotle in Catholic universities for this reason Aristotle was a pagan he didn't believe in creation he seemed to believe that the world was eternal it's kind of unclear Aristotle's work de anima whether the soul and do after death and also the way that aristotle depicts the prime mover the unmoved mover is in a non personal way so if Aristotle did have a highest God that God did not have any interest or care for us on earth so the philosophy Aristotle which has a lot of great things in it as Thomas Aquinas will show us doesn't gel with Catholic theology too well in the church at this time was worried that young people would take this to get carried away and lose their faith so there was you know on and off throughout this century bans on reading Thomas Aquinas but at Naples because it was associated with the Emperor Frederick they weren't this is my guess they weren't necessarily as faithful to these book bands and so Aristotle was being read and discussed more freely at Naples and during this time Thomas acquires two mentors that hadn't change his life forever the first is a gentleman named John of st. Julian and John st. Julian belonged to this brand-new fanatical order of friars called the Dominicans and the Dominicans weren't like the Benedictines they didn't live in fancy Abbey's they didn't own large tracts of land that they farmed and cultivated or that they rented out to be farmed and cultivated instead the Dominicans like the Franciscans were walking around town to town preaching and living this austere life of poverty they were extremely ascetic and noble families like that of Thomas Aquinas looked at these friars as crazy it's like homeless monks roaming around Europe preaching fiery sermons very zealous and it doesn't really fit with quote unquote traditional Catholicism at that time but Thomas Aquinas meets John of st. Julian and he is very impressed his zeal and his charismatic personality he himself wants to become a Dominican this changes things now remember he's at school studying so he can become the abbot of the Benedictine Monte Cassino and here he is changing teams he's moving to the Dominicans and we'll see his family did not like this now also at this time Thomas fell under the influence of Peter of Ireland who was one of the greatest scholars of this time and Peter tutored the young Thomas in the basics of medieval education we're talking about arithmetic geometry astronomy music and he taught him Aristotle okay so thomas aquinas is known as bringing about this synthesis between the pagan aristotle and the biblical tradition of Christianity Thomas Aquinas shows where Aristotle's wrong he either cuts that part out or he re articulates it in a way that a Christian could accept it and then he takes all the good that's in Aristotle and formulates it in a way that helps in bolsters Christianity that's the real genius of Thomas Aquinas and he gets this first training in Aristotle from Peter of Ireland so he's reading these commentaries of Aristotle and his mind is growing and becoming more and more critical in a good way he's becoming critical of reading these texts now a major thing happened when Thomas was 19 so we're moving on just a little bit here he's 19 years old you know he comes home from thanks for Thanksgiving not really there was no Thanksgiving back then but he comes home from a school break and he announces to his family that he is not going to become a Benedictine monk and he's not going to pursue their dream not his dream but their dream to become the abbot of Monte Cassino instead he tells his family I'm going to become a Dominican now especially to the ears of his mother who's the countess this is like saying you know I'm going to become a hippie and a beggar and a fanatic a social outcast I'm gonna smell I'm gonna wear the same robe every day I'm gonna be extremely poor and I'm gonna have no official prestigious post ever in my entire life now he's not doing something you know completely crazy but he is rejecting the family legacy which includes this high position at Monte Cassino of his uncle and his parents especially his mother tried to convince him that it's you know he doesn't need to be a fanatic who sleeps in pigsty and preaches to peasant people who can't even read but Thomas Aquinas has apostolic zeal he wants souls to be saved he wants to teach and express the Christian faith in a new and powerful way he wants to convince heretics to come back to the truth he wants to teach doctrines that are controversial like at this time transubstantiation in a way that's convincing and that makes sense and he's willing to use all the intellectual knowledge of that time in order to build this giant case for Christ both intellectually and from the pulpit so he runs away and goes to Rome and in order to join the Dominicans and he thinks he's gonna be safe but his mother arranges for Thomas to be captured his brothers go to Rome they find him they track him down and when Thomas was near a little stream and he stopped for a drink his brothers jumped him and they carried him back to the castle and here Thomas was held as a prisoner in his own home in his own house the castle for two years okay so at 19 he announces to his family I don't want to be a benedictine I'm gonna be a Dominican he runs to Rome to join him his brothers track him down and he's put under house arrest or he's grounded for two whole years now you know he's not in a dungeon he's not being tortured I'm sure he's eating with the family and having conversation and you know things are fine but he's in trouble and his family's disappointed and this is the the time in his life that's probably one of the most famous it's depicted often in art and it's the it's the girding of thomas aquinas by angels and so here's how the story goes thomas aquinas is in his room and it's not exactly we're not exactly sure who thought of this and how it happened i don't from reading a source of that don't get the take that it was the countess his mother who arranged this but probably one of the brothers thought it was funny and hired a prostitute a woman of the night to come to his room to his quarters and try to seduce him now why would why would they do this well probably they're thinking you know thomas is such a fanatic for god he wants to become one of these you know hippy Dominicans who walks around in sandals and in a robe and sleeps outside you know he's so fanatical you know he just needs a little backsliding a little sin in his life to realize that that kind of life is not the way to go you know maybe he'll mellow out and just settle for being the abbot monte cassino who knows maybe the brothers resented him for all of his piety maybe Thomas Ciccone they felt judged by Thomas Aquinas who knows but a prostitute was was introduced into his room to seduce Thomas Aquinas and when Thomas Aquinas realized this he jumped up and he pulled a smoldering log from the fireplace because there's no heating at that time he pulls a log from the fireplace in one is towards this terrified prostitute and she's screaming and she runs out of the room and Thomas goes and he closes the door and then with the smoldering log he scratches the sign of the Cross on the white wall in his room and he kneels down to pray in front of that cross for this for purity and when he does this when he starts to pray you see this depicted in art two angels appear one on each side of him the right and the left and they tie a miraculous cord around his waist and they disappear and Thomas Aquinas it said in legend that he never again struggled with a lustful thought or action from that moment until his death in other words God sent this apparition in this miraculous cord which was placed around his waist which symbolizes of course the powers of lust and he was delivered from all lustful temptation now my take on this is that Thomas Aquinas became such an amazing intellectual had such a powerful mind because he was so sexually pure without all the distractions that sexual temptation brings us I think that his mind blossomed and became strong and powerful and able to make all these distinctions because from this young age he was totally given over to God and who do we see that Thomas is a mystic he's not just an intellectual who only reads books his heart and his soul are given to Jesus right he is a disciple of Jesus Christ that's his number one identity a mystic well his family begins to see this is not going to work we can't keep him here forever and he escapes from his home and it seems that his mother and his family arrange for him to escape and run off so that he could join the Dominicans and the reason they did that the reason they arranged it is that way they could save face as a family and say well we tried to stop him we did everything we could we wouldn't join those crazy Dominicans but he ran off anyway so we did we did what we could we did what we could so there it is Tomas is a Dominican young man given to the order of preachers following the footsteps of Saint Dominic well the Dominican Order assigned Thomas Aquinas to the city of Paris which was becoming the number one intellectual center in Europe and here he would teach and continue to study and while he was in Paris he met the man who would become his mentor really until his until his death and that is Saint Albert the Great so the three most influential men on Thomas Aquinas were first of all John F st. Julian who led him to the Dominican Order Peter of Ireland who led him to Aristotle and then Saint Albert the Great now Albert the Great was one of the most alert admit was an expert in science history music astronomy Sacred Scripture philosophy and Christian theology and Thomas Aquinas immediately attached himself to Albert because Albert was a Dominican as well but also a great scholar and this is where Thomas was strong so he attached himself to Albert and followed him and when Albert the Great went to Cologne in Germany Thomas Aquinas went with him and Thomas Aquinas became a professor at this time of the Bible Sacred Scripture he wrote commentaries in the Bible Book of Isaiah Jeremiah lamentations and in the year 1252 Thomas goes back to Paris and he completes his master's degree in theology which is the high degree equivalent or even higher than a doctorate in our own time he does this in Paris but there's a little bit of a problem because the University of Paris won't award the degree because the University of Paris does not like Dominicans and doesn't like Franciscans either so Thomas Aquinas and his buddy Bonaventure both Saints both doctor the church are not awarded their degree and in order to get your your master's at this time you had to write a commentary on the sentences of Peter Lombard to 4-volume work and it took Thomas three years to do this and so of course when he finished it was expected that he would have graduate but his graduation was put on hold nevertheless he was appointed Regent master of theology in Paris and because at this time the Dominicans and Franciscans were under attack Thomas began defending the life and poverty and monastic style of the mendicant orders that Dominicans and the Franciscans now it's at this time that Thomas Aquinas is raised up and becomes really the most controversial theologian of the 13th century so in the 1200s he becomes the most important and controversial thinker of that time and he gets in a lot of trouble with the local clergy with the local bishop there's confusion in Rome about who this Thomas Aquinas is and what he's doing so during this time in Paris Thomas was given the task to refute those who were using the philosophy of Aristotle to undermine the Christian faith as we said before in particular the creation of the universe and the immortality of the soul now the manuscripts of Aristotle were coming into Christian Europe which was using Latin as its academic language or coming in through translations from the Arabic of the Muslims in particular there was a Muslim commentator on Aristotle named a Vera Lee's or in Arabic even the ruched even ruched but in Latin they called him a Vera Lee's and by the way if you're ever in a situation where you need to talk about 'verily z-- remember it's not Averroes it's how it looks when it's in print it's a Vera Lee's you sound much more intelligent if you get that right so by reading these documents by the Muslim commentator of Vera Lise Christians we're starting to have a crisis of faith intellectual christians christians in the universities academics right these are learned men and they're saying well you know what maybe God didn't create the universe or hey maybe when we die that's it our souls just kind of go away you know they they resort back to to nothingness they're gone so Thomas Aquinas is given the task look you'd rather deal with these guys show them that they're wrong so Thomas his goal is to show that reason and faith go hand in hand God created reason God created faith God created the natural order of science God also revealed everything there is in theology and since God's the source of both there should be no contradiction between faith and reason faith and science so really the debate that we have today between faith and science is faith and reason was going on all the way back in the 1200s and Thomas Aquinas was the guy appointed to to make it work right to fit it together so Thomas wants to show that science and philosophy fits with Catholic theology and he also needs to show that the way 'verily is the Muslim is reading Aristotle is not the right way that Aristotle can be read in a different way that can be conformed to catholic christian theology so err sorry thomas aquinas begins this great work of reconciliation showing that aristotle can and should be used in catholic theology and although he was successful in it although he looked back in history and see the brilliance of thomas aquinas nevertheless in december of twelve seventy the bishop of paris attend a tempie air issued an edict condemning thirteen Aristotelian and Avera istic propositions as heretical and excommunicating anyone who continued to support them alright so at this time in 1270 anyone associated with Aristotle is in big trouble if not excommunicated and yet Thomas Aquinas continues to use aristotle now he's using aristotle against a very wheeze he's using it for the catholic faith but he's he's doing something that's extremely controversial in 1270 he continues to employ aristotle many even like even the likes of Bonaventure start to take distance from Aristotle and say you know maybe Aristotle's just complete poison it's gonna undermine everything we believe as Christians Thomas Aquinas says no pagan philosophy there's truth there we can take the good and we can leave the bat so in 1272 Thomas Aquinas goes back to Naples where it all began for him and he starts his oh I'm sorry to start he begins to finish his magnum opus his greatest work the Summa Theologiae or the Summa Theologica and while he's there when he's celebrating Mass on the feast of Saint Nicholas all right this is 1273 Thomas falls into ecstasy he falls a necktie and he sees something and he hears the voice of Christ Christ asked him way to desired and Thomas replied only you Lord only you and something happened in this vision and Thomas would never tell it to anyone Thomas at this time was assisted by a secretary named Reginald of people no an Reginald was five years older than Thomas Aquinas and Reginald was his confessor so Thomas Aquinas went to confession to Reginald they work together and Reginald was his assistant his secretary really Thomas Aquinas is second mind and when Reginald begged Thomas to continue writing the Summa tailor she ate Thomas Aquinas said quote Reginald I cannot because all that I have written seems like straw to me and Thomas never wrote or dictated again now this is controversial because people say oh see everything Thomas wrote was bogus you know Thomas even stepped in it was like Oh everything I wrote was straw like hey you know it's not worth anything that's not what Thomas said Thomas says all that I've written written seems like straw to me right it compared to the mysteries that Thomas had seen in this mystical ecstasy what he had written seemed like straw grass hay now meanwhile the Pope at this time Pope Gregory the tenth announced that the Second Council of Leon was to be held in May of 12 twelve seventy four and the Pope wanted to bring together the Eastern Orthodox the Greeks in union with the Catholic Church they'd been estranged the Pope wanted to bring about this great union and guess who the Pope chose to make this happen that's right Thomas Aquinas so Thomas Aquinas is also a great akyuu minused right this great ecumenical bringing together of the Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church was going to be it seemed accomplished through the intellectual and apologetic power of Tom Aquinas but while Thomas Aquinas was traveling to the council he was injured he was riding on the Appian Way and Thomas struck his head on a branch of a fallen tree and I've looked at some of some of the original Latin accounts this and it's kind of fuzzy but it seemed that it seems to me maybe he was riding on a horse and he hit his head or he fell off the horse and hit is it either way he hit his head and he was carried to the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino the place where he was supposed to be Abbot perhaps this was a divinely appointed tribute to his parents wishes and while he was there he recovered and so he felt better again you know his head the swung and his head seemed to go down he felt fine he was talking everybody you know so they got going once again and while he was resting at the cistercian abbey a fossa nova he took a turn for the worse he began to feel ill they brought him in to the monastery he was given last rites and he asked the monks to read the song of songs the canticle of canticles which is the great biblical book of love between a husband and a wife of course it's an analogy of the love of Christ for his church though of Christ for the pure soul and on March 7th 1274 on the way to this great council council of Leon he died and his last words were quote I received the ransom of my soul for love of thee have I studied and kept vigil toiled preached and taught and then his last breath left his lungs he was dead the greatest intellectual mind that perhaps Christianity has ever seen certainly the greatest Christian mind of the last one thousand years perhaps one of the greatest minds ever in the history of humanity ironically he died of a head wound a bump on the head now dr. Paul cammarata who you know from the Saint cast great podcast great Catholic podcast you know he's mentioned that you know in and by the way dr. Cammarata is a is a brain surgeon and he has some ideas of what exactly happened in the physiology of thomas aquinas in his brain and boy be great to maybe do an interview or do a video on that sometime so dr. cameron or if you're listening let's do it it'd be fun and we learn a lot about thomas aquinas and his brain and how he died well thomas aquinas was canonized only 50 years after his death and that's considered very quickly in the history of the church and two centuries later in 1567 pope pius v who was also a dominican proclaimed saint thomas aquinas a doctor of the church and ranked his feast with those of get this Ambrose Agustin Jerome and Gregory the Great and the world has never since seen his equal in my opinion I think in the opinion of all there has never been a Christian theologian as great as Thomas Aquinas he still studied today in almost every University of the world he studied in Catholic universities profit universities Jewish context Muslim context even by atheist Thomas Aquinas is considered to be one of the great intellectuals of all time Saint Thomas Aquinas please pray for us [Music] all right it's time for the tip of the week related to last week's typically first it's a few announcements many of you are signing up for the pilgrimage it's great 2015 February 1st through February 11th I'm leading a pilgrimage and it's more than a pilgrimage it's going to be a time of learning time of of academics of apologetics of exploration of retreat mass and we're gonna go to all the holy places in the holy land we're gonna renew our baptismal vows at the Jordan River we're gonna renew our marriage vows at Cana with a wedding of Cana took place and we're gonna go to Bethlehem to see where our Lord was born Nazareth Galilee Jerusalem the Mount of Olives gall Gotha Mount Calvary where he was crucified and the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus Christ rose from the dead if you'd like to join us it's going to be a wonderful pilgrimage we have a priest of the Franciscan friar of the renewals will be with us and celebrating Mass and hearing confessions we have wonderful top-of-the-line buses and tour guides who are pious and Orthodox and Magisterial and professional and love the faith this is the pilgrimage to go on if you've ever wanted to go to the Holy Land and we're going in February when it's cool so you won't be sweating to death and suffering in the heat so if you've ever thought about going to the Holy Land as a pilgrim come with us we're gonna have a great time you can go to pilgrimages calm forward-slash Taylor Marshall again it's pilgrimages calm forward-slash Taylor Marshall you can learn all about the pilgrimage and where we're going there's Maps all the details and again I hope you'll join us I look forward to getting to know you on the buses as we travel and follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ secondly the new st. Thomas Institute you may have known is back to a waiting list there's no longer an ability to sign up and take classes and earn a certificate with the new Saint Thomas tattoo for new members how however we will in the future open up enrollment again and and make more spots available probably sometime this fall we don't have a date yet so if you're interested in joining the new st. Thomas Institute which is an online platform for taking theology and philosophy courses with me it's easy it's fun it does not take a lot of time and we have well over a thousand students right now who are learning and getting the most of it I could put up probably two to three hundred testimonials from people who are just loving it they're learning Catholic theology in a whole new way online and it's not taking a lot of money or a lot of time so if you're interested in that go to new st. Thomas comm and join the waiting list again you can't sign up right now it's closed there's a waiting list there's no more spots but we will open more spots in the fall that's new st. Thomas dot come and thanks to everyone who is a member I know there's literally hundreds if not a thousand of you who are members of new st. Thomas Institute and listen in this podcast so thank you so much I love it it's just it's just the joy of my week every week the new st. Thomas Institute ok our tip of the week last week the tip of the week was hey let's read three chapters of the Bible every week and read the whole Bible in a year we can do it you know we've read novels all the time we go to the beach we read thick novels that are 600 pages let's just make the commitment to read the Bible at least one time in our life these are the love letters of God to us so since then I thought you know I should have mentioned another tip so this is this week's tip tip of the week get an audio Bible that's right an audio Bible that you can use with your iPhone or your Android device or with an mp3 player there are hundreds of them available I've tried different ones and to be honest I have not found a Catholic audio Bible that to me is up to snuff if you know of one I want to know about it so please go to Taylor Marshall comm episode 46 and leave a comment if you found a really good one but there are other ones available and I do use them and it's a great way while you're driving to listen to the Bible and you know not just three chapters sometimes you know you get caught into and you listen to ten chapters and you just move through the Scriptures so if you're not a visual person maybe you're more of an audible person get the Bible on CD get it on tape get it on eight-track get it on mp3 whatever your format you want and start listening to Sacred Scripture it's a great way to learn the Bible and when you learn the Bible you get to know God st. Jerome said ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ you won't really know Christ to the full potential unless you know the sacred scriptures well that brings us to the end into our Latin word of the week and in case it is your first time listening to the Taylor Marshall show there's a free gift waiting for you go to Taylor Marshall calm and there's a book Thomas Aquinas in 50 pages as a matter of fact much of what I talked about today the life of Thomas Aquinas is in this short book but this book isn't just to know the life of Thomas Aquinas is to teach you the thinking the philosophy the vocabulary and the theology of Thomas Aquinas I take probably three to four semesters of graduate-level Thomas Aquinas stuff and stuff at all in the 50 pages and away it's easy to understand and fun and best of all it's free 100% free nobody it's a free book go to Taylor Marshall calm in the upper right hand corner you can see to get your your free book put your email address in there and we will email you within the next 5 or 10 minutes the free book it's a free resource because we're trying to make the world a more - mystic place also I want to give a shout out to everyone who raided this podcast there's been a lot of you whenever you rate this podcast in iTunes it lifts rank of this podcast and more people see it more people listen to it more people subscribe to it comes out every Wednesday if you're new please do subscribe to it'll come straight to your device and if you have the time please just take 40 seconds and leave a one to five star review and a little review of this podcast it would mean the world to me it always pumps me up and charges me up to read your reviews and I give a shout out to Al instigator C g gk w meep a hack Catholic agent JT connell mw4 - in DJ s for leaving five star reviews thank you so much and I want to read the review here from JT connell because it really hit me it's it's awesome listen to those JT connell writes quote it's rare it seems to find an Orthodox Catholic who is thoroughly grounded in the faith who was also out there in the marketplace and who is listenable easy to listen to dr. Marshall hits home runs in his podcast with a regularity that would be the envy of any major leaguer easygoing and folksy at times yes resolute and unapologetic absolutely but that's what is needed and quote so JT connell thanks so much for that awesome review and thank you for all 200 and something who have left amazing reviews I love you to death I'm so grateful for you doing that and we'll close up with our Latin word of the week this week's word is both BOS and ax genitive it's bovis both boasts it means ox bull sometimes cow and the reason I chose this is Thomas Aquinas is called the dumb ox he was big and round like an ox and he didn't say much and so he was considered to be dumb st. Albert the great said that this dumb ox was one day Bello throughout all Christendom and that's true he was a silent man he was big man but his voice is still her today he is the dumb Bose the dumb ox and of course our motto our Latin motto for the new st. Thomas Institute is known are the gobby's both bodies do not muzzle the mouth of an ox that comes from the Old Testament also the st. Paul it means when an ox is threshing your field plowing your field don't muzzle them let them eat the food but we chose it for the new st. Thomas Institute because we don't want to muzzle the mouth of Thomas Aquinas we want his voice to speak we want to make the world atomistic place we want to see if theological a Catholic theological renaissance in our time that's what we're all about so it relates to our word both ox well that's it for this week thanks for listening I hope you learned a lot about Thomas Aquinas and I hope you're encouraged to continue to learn more about this great st. Thomas Aquinas til next time remember that our Lord Jesus Christ said that you are the light of the world and the salt of the earth so go out there and be salty no not obvious qualities don't panic obvious possibilities don't on a compost regardless this move is no other copy [Music] Alec artists of thirties not at a Gabby for Bobby's not Anna goddess of bothies police [Laughter]

Channel: Dr Taylor Marshall

Views: 15,773

Rating: 4.9499998 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, Taylor Marshall, Theology, Apologetics, New Saint Thomas Institute, secret, life, Thomas Aquinas, Saint, St. Thomas, Aquinas, Dominican

Id: 5NSDQyc-HsE

Length: 52min 42sec (3162 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016