Category: Thomas Aquinas

Posted in The MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD, The PASSION, The REDEMPTION, Thomas Aquinas

Friday of the 4th Week of Lent – 20 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Precious Blood

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Friday of the 4th Week of Lent –20 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Friday of the Fourth Week
The Precious Blood

“Through the Blood of Christ the New Testament was confirmed. This Chalice is the New Testament in My Blood.”
i Cor xi. 25

Testament has a double meaning.
(1) It may mean any kind of agreement or pact.
Now God has twice made an agreement with mankind.
In one pact, God promised man temporal prosperity and deliverance from temporal losses and, this pact is called the Old Testament.
In another pact, God promised man spiritual blessings and deliverance from spiritual losses and this is called the New Testament, “I will make a new covenant, saith the Lord, with the house of Israel and with the house of ]uda, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt but this shall be the covenant: I will give My Law in their bosoms and I shall write it in their hearts and I shal be their God and they shall be My people” (]er xxxi. 31-33).
Among the ancients, it was customary to pour out the blood of some victim in confirmation of a pact.
This Moses did when, taking the blood, he sprinkled it upon the people and he said, “This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you” (Exod xxiv. 8).
As the Old Testament was thus confirmed in the figurative blood of oxen, so the New Testament or pact, was confirmed in the Blood of Christ, shed during His Passion.

(2) Testament has another more restricted meaning when it signifies the arrangement of an inheritance among the different heirs, i.e. a will.
Testaments, in this sense, are only confirmed by the death of the testator.
As St Paul says, “For a testament is of force, after men are dead, otherwise, it is as yet of no strength, whilst the testator liveth” (Heb ix. 17).
God, in the beginning, made an arrangement of the eternal inheritance we were to receive but, under the figure of temporal goods.
This is the Old Testament.
But afterwards He made the New Testament, explicitly promising the eternal inheritance which indeed, was confirmed by the Blood of the Death of Christ.
And, therefore, Our Lord, speaking of this, says, “This Chalice is the new testament in My Blood” (i Cor xi. 25) as though to say, “By that which is contained in this Chalice, the new testament, confirmed in the Blood of Christ, is commemorated.” (In 1 Cor xii.)

  1. There are other features which make the Blood of Christ Precious.
    It is:
    (i) A cleansing of our sins and uncleanness.
    “Jesus Christ hath loved us and washed us from our sins in His Own Blood” (Apoc. i. 5).
    (ii) Our Redemption, “Thou hast Redeemed us in Thy
    Blood” (ibid. v. 9).
    (iii) The Peacemaker between us and God and His Angels, “making peace through the Blood of His Cross, both as to the things which are on earth and the things which are in the heavens” (Coloss. i. 20).
    (iv) A draught of life to all who receive it.
    “Drink ye all of this”(Matt xxvi. 27).
    ”That they might drink the purest blood of the grape ”(Deut xxxii. 14).
    (v) The opening of the Gate of Heaven.
    “Having, therefore brethren, a confidence in the entering into the holies by the Blood of Christ” (Heb x. 19) that is to say, a continuous prayer for us to God.
    “For His Blood daily cries for us to the Father, as again we are told, You are come to the sprinkling of Blood which speaketh better than that of Abel” (ibid xii. 22-24).
    The blood of Abel called for punishment.
    The Blood of Christ calls for pardon.
    (vi) Deliverance of the saints from hell.
    “ Thou also, by the blood of thy testament, hast sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit, wherein is no wate” (Zach ix. 11).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, ORIGINAL SIN, QUOTES on DEATH, QUOTES on SIN, Thomas Aquinas

Thursday of the 4th Week of Lent –19 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Death of Lazarus

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Thursday of the 4th Week of Lent –19 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Thursday of the Fourth Week
The Death of Lazarus

“Lazarus our friend, sleepeth”
John xi. 11

Our friend, for the many benefits and services he rendered us and, therefore, we owe it, not to fail in his necessity. Sleepeth, therefore, we must come to his assistance; “a brother is proved in distress” (Prov xvii. 17).

He sleepeth, I say, as St Augustine says, to the Lord.
But to men he was dead, nor had they power to raise him.

Sleep is a word we use with various meanings.
We use it to mean natural sleep, negligence, blameworthy inattention, the peace of contemplation, the peace of future glory and, we use it also, to mean death.
We will not have you ignorant, concerning the last sleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope, says St Paul (i Thess. iv. 12).

Death is called sleep because of the hope of resurrection and so it has been customary to give death this name since the time when Christ Died and was Raised again, “I have Slept and have taken My rest”(Ps. iii. 6).
“I go that I may awake him out of sleep” (John xi. n).

In these words, Jesus gives us to understand that He could raise Lazarus from the tomb as easily as we raise a sleeper from his bed.
Nor is this to be wondered at, for He is none other than the Lord Who raiseth up the dead and giveth life (John v. 21). And hence, He is able to say, “The hour ccmeth when all who are in the graves, shall hear the Voice of the Son of God (ibid. v. 28).

“Let us go to Him” (John xi. 15).

Here it is the mercifulness of God which we are shown.
Men, living in sin and, as it were, dead, unable by any power of their own to come to Him, He mercifully draws them, anticipating their desire and need.
Jeremias speaks of this when he says, “Thus saith the Lord, I have Loved thee with an Everlasting Love, therefore, have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee”(Jer. xxxi. 3).

“Jesus, therefore, came and found, he had been in the grave, four days already” (John xi. 17).

St Augustine sees in the four day dead Lazarus, a figure of the fourfold spiritual death of the sinner.
He dies, in fact, through Original Sin, through actual sin, against the natural law, through actual sin against the written law, through actual sin against the law of the Gospel and of Grace.

Another interpretation is that the first day represents the sin of the heart, “Take away the evil of your thoughts” says Isaias (i. 16); the second day represents sins of the tongue, “Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth” says St Paul (Eph iv. 29); the third day represents the sins of evil action, “Cease to act perversely” (Isaias i. 16); the fourth day represents the sins of wicked habit.

Whatever explanation we give, Our Lord at times does heal those who are four days dead, i.e, those who have broken the law of the Gospel and are bound fast by habits of sin.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in "Follow Me", GOD ALONE!, LENT 2026, QUOTES for CHRIST, QUOTES on FRIENDSHIP, QUOTES on LOVE of GOD, Thomas Aquinas

Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent – 18 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Divine Friend

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Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent –18 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Wednesday of the Fourth Week
The Divine Friend

“His sisters sent to Him saying :
Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest, is ill.”
John xi. 3

Three things here call for thought.

  1. God’s friends are afflicted from time to time in the body.
    It is not, therefore, in any way a proof that a man is not a friend of God if he is ill and ailing.
    Eliphaz argued falsely against Job when he said, “Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished being innocent?or when were the just destroyed?” (Job iv. 7).

The Gospel corrects this when it says, “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is ill” and the Book of Proverbs, too, where we read, “For whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth and as a father in the son, He pleaseth Himself” (Prov. iii. 12).

  1. The sisters do not say, “Lord, come and heal him.”
    They merely explain that Lazarus is ill, they say, he is sick. This is to remind us that, when we are dealing with a friend, it is enough to make known our necessity, we do not need to add a request.
    For a friend, since he wills the welfare of his friend, as he wills his own, is as anxious to ward off evil from his friend as he is to ward it off from himself.
    This is true, most of all in the case of Him Who, of all friends, Loves most truly.
    “The Lord keepeth all those who love Him”(Ps cxliv. 20).
  2. These two sisters, who so greatly desire the cure of their ill brother, do not come to Christ personally, as did the centurion and the man ill of the palsy.
    From the special Love and familiarity which Christ had shown them, they had a special confidence in Him.
    And, possibly, their grief kept them at home, as St Chrysostom thinks.
    “A friend, if he continue steadfast, shall be to thee, as thyself, and shall act with confidence among those of thy household” (Ecclus vi. 11).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in "Follow Me", CHRIST, the WAY,TRUTH,LIFE, LENT 2026, QUOTES on DEATH, QUOTES on the CROSS of CHRIST, The HOLY CROSS, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Tuesday of the 4th Week of Lent –16 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Example of Christ Crucified

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Tuesday of the 4th Week of Lent –16 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Tuesday of the Fourth Week
The Example of Christ Crucified

“Christ Suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow His steps”
I Pet ii. 21

Christ assumed human nature in order to restore fallen humanity.
He had, therefore, to Suffer and to execute, according to human nature, all which could serve as a remedy against the sin of the fall.

Man’s sin consists in this – that he so cleaves to bodily goods that he neglects what is good spiritually.
It was, therefore, necessary for the Son of God to show this in the humanity He had taken, through all He did and Suffered, so that men should repute temporal things, whether good or evil, as nothing, for otherwise, hindered by an exaggerated affection for them, they would be less devoted to spiritual things.

Christ, therefore, chose poor people for His Parents, people nevertheless, perfect in virtue, so that none of us should glory in the mere rank or wealth of our parents.

He led the life of a poor man, to teach us to set no store by wealth.

He lived the life of an ordinary man, without any rank, to wean men from an undue desire for honours.

Toil, thirst, hunger, the aches of the body, all these He endured, to encourage men, whom pleasures and delights attract, not to be deterred from virtue by the austerity a good life entails.

He went as far as to endure even Death, lest the fear of death might at any time tempt man to abandon the Truth.
And lest any of us might dread to die, even a shameful death for the Truth, He chose to Die by the most Accursed Death of all, by Crucifixion.

That the Son of God, made man, should Suffer Death was also fitting for this reason – by His example, He stimulates our courage and so, makes true what St Peter said, “Christ Suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow His steps” (I Pet ii. 21).

Christ truly Suffered for us, leaving us an example in anxieties, contempts, scourgings, the cross, death itself, that we might follow in His Steps.
If we endure our own anxieties and sufferings for Christ, we shall also reign together with Christ in the happiness which is everlasting.
St Bernard says, “How few are they, O Lord, who yearn to go after Thee and yet, there is no-ne who desireth not to come to Thee, for all men know that in Thy Right Hand are delights which will never fail.
All desire to enjoy Thee but not all to imitate Thee.
They would willingly reign with Thee but spare themselves from suffering with Thee.
They have no desire to look for Thee, Whom yet they desire to find.“

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on MERIT, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Monday of the 4th Week of Lent –16 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Christ, by His Passion, Merited to be Exalted

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Monday of the 4th Week of Lent –16 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Monday of the 4th Week
Christ, by His Passion, Merited to be Exalted

“He became obedient unto death, even to Death on the Cross; for which Cause, God hath exalted Him.”
Phil ii. 8.

Merit implies a certain equality of justice.
Thus, St Paul says, “To him who worketh, the reward is reckoned according to debt”(Rom iv. 4).

Now, since a man who commits an injustice takes for himself more than is due to him, it is just that he suffer loss even in what is actually due to him.
If a man steals one sheep, he shall give back four as it says in Holy Scripture (Exod xxii. i).
And this is said to be merited, inasmuch as in this way the man’s evil will is punished.
In the same way, the man who acts with such justice that he take less than what is due to him, merits that more shall be generously added to what he has, as a reward for his just will .
So, for instance, the Gospel tells us, “he who humbleth himself shall be exalted” (Luke xiv. 11).

Now in His Passion, Christ humbled Himself below His Dignity in four respects:
(i) In respect of His Passion and His Death – He underwent these Sufferings, for which He did not owe a debt.
(ii) In respect of locations – for His Body was placed in a grave and His Soul in hell.
(iii) In respect of the Confusion and Shame which He endured.
(iv) In respect of His being delivered to human authority – as He said to Pilate Himself, “Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above” (John xix. 11).

Therefore, on account of His Passion, He Merited a fourfold Exaltation.
(i) A glorious Resurrection.
It is said in the Psalm (Ps cxxxviii. 1), “Thou hast known My Sitting down that is, the humiliation of My Passion and My Rising up.”
(ii) An Ascension into Heaven.
Whence it is said, “He Descended first into the lower parts of the earth – He who Descended is the same Who Ascended above all the heavens” (Eph iv. 9, 10).
(iii) To be seated at the Right Hand of the Father, with His Divinity made manifest.
Isaias says, He shall be Exalted and Extolled, and shall be exceeding high. As many have been astonished at thee, so shall His visage be inglorious among men and St Paul says, “He became obedient unto Death, even to the Death on the Cross. For which Cause God hath Exalted Him and hath given Him a Name which, is above all names” (Phil ii. 8, 9) that is to say, He shall be named God by all and all shall pay Him reverence as God.
And this is why St Paul adds,“In the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (ibid. x).
(iv) A Power of Judgement.
For it is said, “Thy Cause hath been judged as that of the wicked. Cause and judgement thou shalt recover” (Job xxxvi. 17).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on HEAVEN, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

LAETARE – The 4th SUNDAY of Lent –15 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Christ, by His Passion, Opened the Gates of Heaven

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LAETARE – The 4th SUNDAY of Lent –15 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Doctor of the Church

The Fourth (LAETARE) Sunday
Christ, by His Passion, Opened, the Gates of Heaven

“We have a confidence in the entering into the holies by the Blood of Christ.”
Hebrews x. 19.

The closing of a gate is an obstacle hindering men’s entrance.
Now men are hindered by sin, from entrance to the Heavenly Kingdom, for Isaias says, “It shall be called the holy way, the unclean shall not pass over it”(Is xxxv. 8).

Now the sin which hinders man’s entrance into Heaven,is of two kinds.
There is, first of all, the sin of our first parents.
By this sin, access to the Kingdom of Heaven was barred to man.
We read in Genesis (iii. 24) that after the sin of our first parents God placed before the paradise of pleasure, Cherubim and a flaming sword, turning every way, to protect the way of the tree of life.
The other kind of hindrance arises from the sins of each individual, the sins each man commits by his own particular action.

By the Passion of Christ, we are freed not only from the sin common to all human nature and this both as to the sin and as to its appointed penalty, since Christ Pays the Price on our behalf but too, we are delivered from our personal sins if we are numbered among those who are linked to the Passion by faith, by charity and by the Sacraments of the Faith.
Thus, it is that through the Passion of Christ the Gates of Heaven are thrown open to us.
And hence, St Paul says that Christ, being a High Priest of the good things to come, by His Own Blood entered once into the holies, having obtained a redemption which is eternal (Heb ix. 11).

And this was foreshadowed in the Old Testament, where we read (Num xxxv. 25, 28), the Man-slayer shall abide there, that is, in the City of Refuge, until the Death of the High Priest, Who is anointe with holy oil. And after He is Dead, then shall the Man-slayer return to His own cCuntry.

The holy fathers who (before the coming of Christ) wrought works of justice earned their entrance into Heaven through faith in the Passion of Christ, as is written, “The saints, by faith, conquered kingdoms, wrought justice” (Heb xi. 33).
By faith, too, it was that individuals were cleansed from the sins they had individually committed.
But faith or goodness, no matter who the person was who possessed them, was not enough to be able to move the hindrance created by the guilty state of the whole human creation.
This hindrance was only removed at the Price of the Blood of Christ.
And, therefore, before the Passion of Christ, no-one could enter the Heavenly Kingdom, to obtain that eternal happiness which consists in the full enjoyment of God.

Christ by His Passion Merited for us, an entrance into Heaven, and removed what stood in our way.
By His Ascension, however, He, as it were, put mankind in possession of Heaven.
And, therefore, it is that He ascended, opening the way before them.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on HELL, QUOTES on SIN, QUOTES on THE MYSTICAL BODY, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Friday of the Third Week of Lent –13 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – It is by the Passion of Christ that we have been Freed from the Punishment Due to Sin

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Friday of the Third Week of Lent –13 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Friday of the Third Week
It is by the Passion of Christ that we have been
Freed from the Punishment Due to Sin

“Surely He hath borne our infirmities
and carried our sorrows.”
Isaias liii. 4.

By the Passion of Christ we are freed from the liability to be punished for sin with the punishment which sin calls for, in two ways, directly and indirectly.

We are freed directly ,inasmuch as the Passion of Christ made sufficient and more than sufficient Satisfaction for the sins of the whole human race.
Now once sufficient Satisfaction has been made, the liability to the punishment mentioned is destroyed.

We are freed indirectl, inasmuch as the Passion of Christ causes the sin to be remitted and, it is from the sin that the liability to the punishment derives.

Souls in hell, however, are not freed by the Passion of Christ because the Passion of Christ shares its effect with those to whom it is applied by faith and by charity and by the Sacraments of faith.
Therefore, the souls in hell, who are not linked to the Passion of Christ in the way just mentioned, cannot receive its effects thereof.

Now, although we are freed from liability to the precise penalty which sin deserves, there is, nevertheless, enjoined to the repentant sinner, a penalty or penance of satisfaction. For, in order that the effect of the Passion of Christ be fully achieved in us, it is necessary for us to be made of like form with Christ.
Now we are made of like form with Christ in Baptism by the Sacrament, as is said by St Paul, “We are buried together with Him by Baptism into death” (Rom vi. 4).
Whence it is, no penalty of satisfaction is imposed on those who are Baptised.
Through the Satisfaction made by Christ, they are wholly set free.
But since Christ died Once for our sins (1 Pet iii. 18) Once only, man cannot, a second time, be made of like form with the death of Christ through the Sacrament of Baptism. Therefore, those who, after Baptism, sin again, must be made like to Christ in His suffering, through some kind of penalty or suffering which they endure in their own persons.

If death which is a penalty due to sin, continues to subsist, the reason is this: The Satisfaction made by Christ produces its effect in us, insofar as we are made of One Body with Him, in the way limbs are One Body with the Head.
Now it is necessary that the limbs be made to conform to the head. Wherefore since Christ at first had, together with the Grace in His Soul, a liability to Suffer in His Body and came to His glorious immortality through the Passion, so also should it be with us, who are His Limbs. By the Passion we are indeed delivered from any punishment as a debt applied to us but, we are delivered in such a way that it is in the soul we first receive the spirit of the adoption of sons, by which we are added to the list for the inheritance of eternal glory, while we still retain a body which an suffer and die.

It is only afterwards, when we have been fashioned to the Likeness of Christ in His Sufferings and Death that we are brought into the glory of immortality.
St Paul teaches this when he says, “If sons, heirs also heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ yet so, if we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him” (Rom viii. 17).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in "Follow Me", CHRIST the LIGHT, CHRIST the WORD and WISDOM, CHRIST, the WAY,TRUTH,LIFE, LENT 2026, The WORD, Thomas Aquinas

Thursday of the Third Week of Lent – 12 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Preaching of the Samaritan Woman

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Thursday of the Third Week of Lent – 12 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Thursday of the Third Week
The Preaching of the Samaritan Woman

“The woman, therefore, left her water-pot
and went her way into the City.”
John iv. 28.

This woman, once Christ had instructed her, became an apostle.
There are three elements which we can gather from what she said and what she did.

  1. The entirety of her surrender to Our Lord.
    This is shown:

(i) From the fact that she left lying there, almost as if forgotten that for which she had come to the well, the water and the water-pot. So great was her absorption.
Hence it is said, The woman left her water-pot and went away into the city, went away to announce the wonderful works of Christ. She cared no longer for the bodily comforts, in view of the usefulness of better things, following in this, the example of the Apostles of whom it is said, “Leaving their nets, they followed the Lord” (Mark 1. 18).

The water-pot represents fashionable desire, by means of which men draw up pleasures from those depths of darkness, signified by the well, i.e. from practices which are of the earth.
Those who abandon such desires for the sake of God, are like the woman who left her water-pot.

(ii) From the multitude to whom she tells the news, not to one nor to two or three but to a whole City.
This is why she went away into the City.

  1. A method of preaching.
    “She saith to the men there: Come, and see a Man Who has told me all things whatsoever I hav done. Is not He the Christ?” John iv. 29.

(i) She invites them to look upon Christ: Come,and see a Man–she did not straightway say that they should give themselves to Christ, for that might have been for them an occasion for blasphemy but, to begin, she told them about Christ facits which were believable and open to observation. She told them He was a Man.
Nor did she say, Believe but come and see, for she knew that if they, too, tasted of that well, looked upon Our Lord, they, too, would feel all she had felt.
And she follows the example of a true preacher in that she attracts the men not to herself but, to Christ!

(ii) She gives them a hint that Christ is God when she says, A Man Who has told me all things whatsoever I have done, that is to say, how many husbands she had had. She is not ashamed to bring up facits which make for her own confusion because the soul, once it is aliight with the Divine Fire, in no way looks to earthly values and standards, cares neither for its own glory nor its shame but only for that Flame which holds and consumes it.

(iii) She suggests that this proves the majesty of Christ, saying, Is not He the Christ?
She does not dare to assert that He is the Christ, lest she have the appearance of wishing to teach others and the others, irritated thereat, refuse to go out to Him.
Nor, on the other hand, does she leave the matter in silence but she puts it before them questioningly, as though she left it to their own judgment.
For this is the easiest of all ways of persuasion.

  1. The Fruit of Preaching.
    “She invites them to look upon Christ: Come,and see … They, therefore, went out of the City and came unto Christ.” John iv. 30.

Hereby it is made clear to us that if we would come to Christ, we too must go out of the City, which is to say, we must lay aside all love of bodily delights.

Let us go forth, therefore, to Him without the camp (Heb xiii. 13)

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on SUFFERING, The MOST HOLY REDEEMER, Our SAVIOUR, The PASSION, The REDEMPTION, Thomas Aquinas

Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent – 11 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Price of Our Redemption

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Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent – 11 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Wednesday of the Third Week
The Price of Our Redemption

“You are bought at a great price.”
I Cor vi. 20

The indignities and sufferings anyone suffers are measured according to the dignity of the person concerned.
If a King is struck in the face, he suffers a greater indignity than does a private person.
But, the dignity of Christ is Infinite, for He is a Divine Person. Therefore, any Suffering undergone by Him, even the least conceivable Suffering, is Infinite.
Any suffering at all, then, undergone by Him, without His Death, would have sufficed to Redeem the human race.

St Bernard says – the least drop of the Blood of Christ would have sufficed for the Redemption of us all.
And Christ could have shed that One Drop without Dying. Therefore, even without Dying He could, by some kind of Suffering, have Redeemed, that is, Bought Back, all mankind.

Now in any purchase, two elements are required, i.e. an amount equal to the price demanded and, the assigning of that amount to the purpose of buying.
For if a man gives a price which is not equal in value to the item to be purchased, we do not say that he has bought it but only that he has partly bought it and partly been given it.
For example, if a man buys, for ten shillings, a book worth twenty shillings, he has partly bought the book and it has, partly been donated to him.

… If, therefore, when we speak of the Redemption and Buying Back of the human race, we have, in view, the amount of the Price required, we must say that any Suffering undergone by Christ, even without His Death, would have sufficed because of the Infinite worth of His Person.
If, however, we speak of the Redemption with reference to the setting of the Price to the purpose in hand, we have then to say that no other Suffering of Christ less than His Death, was set by God and by Christ, as the Price to be paid for the Redemption of man kind.

And this was so for three reasons:

  1. That the Price of our Redemption should not only be Infinite in value but be of the same kind as what it bought, i.e., that it should be with a Death that He Bought us Back from death.
  2. That the Death of Christ would be not only the Price of our Redemption but too, an example of courage, so that men would not be afraid to die, for the Truth.
    St Paul makes mention of this and the preceding cause when he says, That, through death, He might destroy him who had the empire of death (this is the first cause) and might deliver them, who throug the fear of death were subject to servitude all their lifetime (this for the second cause) (Heb ii. 14, 15).
  3. That the Death of Christ might be a Sacrament to work our Salvation; we, that is, dying to sin, to bodily desires and to our own will through the power of the Death of Christ. These reasons are given by St Peter when he says, Christ who Died once for our sins, the Just for the unjust that He might offer us to God, being put to Death indeed in the flesh but enlivened in the spirit (1 Pet iii. 18).

And so it is that mankind has not been Redeemed by any other Suffering of Christ without His Death.

But, as a matter of fact, Christ would have paid sufficiently for the Redemption of mankind, not only by giving His Own Life but by Suffering any Suffering, no matter how slight, if this slight Suffering had been the requirement Divinely appointed and Christ, would thereby, have paid sufficiently because of the Infinite worth of His Person.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in JULY - The MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD, ORIGINAL SIN, QUOTES on SUFFERING, QUOTES on the DEVIL/EVIL, The MOST HOLY REDEEMER, Our SAVIOUR, The MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD, The PASSION, The REDEMPTION, Thomas Aquinas

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent – 10 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Christ is Truly our Redeemer

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Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent – 10 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Tuesday of the Third Week
Christ is Truly our Redeemer

“You were redeemed with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unspotted and undefiled.”
I Peter 1. 19

By the sin of our first parents, the whole human race was alienated from God, as is taught in the 2nd Chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians.
It was not from God’s Power that we were thereby severed but from that Sight of God’s Face to which His children and His servants are admitted.

Then again, we descended beneath the usurped power of the devil. Man had consented to the devil’s will and, thereby, had made himself subject to the devil; subject, that is to say, as far as lies in man’s power, for since he was not his own property but the property of Another, he could not really give himself away to the devil.

By His Passion then, Christ achieved two vital elements.
He freed us from the power of the enemy, conquering him by virtues which were the very opposite to the vices by which he had conquered man – by humility, namely, by obedience and by an austerity of suffering which was in direct opposition to the enjoyment of forbidden food.

Furthermore, by making satisfaction for the sin committed, Christ joined man to God and made him the child and servant of God.

This emancipation had about it two features which make it a type of trade or purchase.
Christ is said to have bought us back or to have Redeemed us, inasmuch as He snatched us from the power of the devil, by hard-fought battles, to Redeem His Kingdom which the enemy had occupied.
Christ is again said to have Redeemed us, inasmuch as He placated God on our behalf, paying as it were, the price of His satisfaction that we might be freed, both from the penalty and from the sin.

This Price, His Precious Blood, He paid that He might make satisfaction for us not to the devil but to God.
Again, by the Victory of His Passion was, He took us away from the devil.

The devil had indeed had dominion over us but unjustly, since what power he had was usurped.
Nevertheless, it was but just that we should fall under his yoke, as it was by him that we were overcome.
This is why it was necessary that the devil should be overcome by the very opposite of the forces by which he had himself overcome.
For he had not overcome by violence but by a lying persuasion to sin.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on the ANTI-christ, QUOTES on the DEVIL/EVIL, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Monday of the Third Week of Lent – 8 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Passion of Christ has Delivered us from the devil.

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Monday of the Third Week of Lent – 8 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Monday of the Third Week
The Passion of Christ has Delivered us from the devil.

“Our Lord said, as His Passion drew near, Now shall the princes of this world be cast out.
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself”
John xii. 31, 32

He was lifted up from the earth by His Passion on the Cross. Therefore, by that Passion, the devil was driven out from his dominion over men.

With reference to that power which, before the Passion of Christ, the devil exercised over mankind, three elements are to be borne in mind.

  1. Man had by his sin, earned for himself, enslavement to the devil, for it was by the devil’s temptation that he had been overcome.
  2. God, Whom man in sinning had offended, had, by His Justice, abandoned man to the enslave ment of the devil.
  3. The devil, by his own most wicked will, stood in the way of man’s achieving his salvation.

With regard to the first point, the Passion of Christ set man free from the devil’s power because the Passion of Christ brought about the forgiveness of sin.
As to the second point the Passion delivered man from the devil because it brought about a reconciliation between God and man. A
s to the third point, the Passion of Christ freed us from the devil’s power because, in his action during the Passion, the devil over-reached himself. He went beyond the limits of the power over men allowed to him by God, when he plotted the death of Christ, upon Whom, since he was without sin, there lay no debt payable by death.
Whence St Augustine s words, “The devil was overcome by the Justice of Christ. In Him the devil found nothing which deserved death but, nonetheless, he slew Him.
And, it was but just that those debtors who the devil detained, should go free since they believed in Him Whom, though He was under no bond to him, the devil had slain.”

The devil still continues to exercise a power over men.
He can, God permitting it, tempt them in soul and in body. There is, however, made available for man a remedy in the Passion of Christ, by means of which he can defend himself against these attacks, so that they do not lead him into the destruction of eternal death.
Likewise, all those, who before the Passion of Christ, resisted the devil had derived their power to resist from the Passion, although the Passion had not yet been accomplished.
But in one point, none of those who lived before the Passion had been able to escape the hand of the devil, namely, they all had to go down into hell, a thing from which, since the Passion, all men can, by His Power, defend them selves.

God also, allows the devil to deceive men in certain persons, times and places, according to the hidden character of His Designs.
Such, for example, will be anti-Christ.
But there always remains and, for the age of anti-Christ too, a remedy prepared for man through the Passion of Christ, a power of protecting himself against the wickedness of the devils.
The fact that there are some who neglect to make use of this remedy, does not lessen the efficacy of the Passion of Christ.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on SIN, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

The Third Sunday of Lent – 8 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – It is the Passion of Christ which has Freed Us from Sin

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The Third Sunday of Lent – 8 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

The Third Sunday of Lent
It is the Passion of Christ
which has Freed Us from Sin

“He hath loved us and washed us
from our sins in His Own Blood.”
Apoc 1. 5.

The Passion of Christ is the proper Cause of the remission of our sins and that in three ways:

  1. Because it provokes us to love God. St Paul says, “God commendeth His Charity towards us because when, as yet we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom v. 8).

Through charity we obtain forgiveness for sin, as it says in the Gospel, “Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much” (Luke vii. 47).

2.The Passion of Christ is the Cause of the forgiveness of sins because it is an act of Redemption. Since Christ is Himself our Head, He has, by His Own Passion undertaken from Love and Obedience delivered us, His Members, from our sins, as it were, at the Price of His Passion.
Just as a man might, by some act of goodness undertaken with his hands, buy himself off for an error he had comitted with his feet.
For as man’s natural body is a unity, made up of different limbs, so the whole Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is reckoned as a single person with its own Head and this Head is Christ.

3.The Passion of Christ was equal to its task.
For the Human Nature, through which Christ Suffered His Passion, is the instrument of His Divine Nature.
Whence all the actions and all the sufferings of that Human Nature wrought to drive out sin, are wrought by a Power which is Divine.

Christ, in His Passion, delivered us from our sins in a causal way, which is to say, He set up for us a Cause of our emancipation, a thing whereby any sin might, at any time, be remitted, whether committed now, or in times gone by, or in time to come: much as a physician might make a medicine from which all who are sick may be healed, even those sick in the years yet to come.

But since, what gives the Passion of Christ its excellence is the fact that it is the universal cause of the forgiveness of sins, it is necessary that we each of us ourselves make use of it for the forgiveness of our own particular sins. This is done through Baptism, Penance and the other sacraments, whose power derives from the Passion of Christ.

By faith too, we make use of the Passion of Christ, in order to receive its fruits, as St Paul says, “Christ Jesus, Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in His Blood” (Rom iii 25).
But the faith by which we are cleansed from sin is not that faith which can exist side by side with sin – the faith called formless – but faith formed, which is to say, faith made alive by charity.
So that the Passion of Christ is not through faith applied merely to our understanding but also, to our will. Again, it is from the Power of the Passion of Christ that the sins are forgiven which are forgiven by faith in this way.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in CHRIST the SUN of JUSTICE, LENT 2026, QUOTES on REPARATION/EXPIATION, QUOTES on SIN, QUOTES on the DEVIL/EVIL, The MOST HOLY REDEEMER, Our SAVIOUR, The PASSION, The REDEMPTION, Thomas Aquinas

Saturday of the Second Week of Lent – 6 March – Our Lenten The Passion of ChristWrought our Salvation by Redeeming usJourney With St Thomas Aquinas –

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Saturday of the Second Week of Lent – 6 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Saturday of the Second Week
The Passion of Christ
Wrought our Salvation by Redeeming us

St Peter says, “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, as gold or silver, from your vain conversation of the tradition of your fathers but, with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a Lamb unspotted and undefiled”
I Peter 1. 18.

St.Paul says, “Christ hath Redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a Curse for us“ (Gal iii. 13).
He is said to be accursed in our place, inasmuch as it was for us that He Suffered on the Cross. Therefore, by His Passion, He Redeemed us.

Sin, in fact, had bound man with a double obligation.

(i) An obligation which made him sin’s slave. For Jesus said, “whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (John viii. 34).
A man is enslaved to whoever overcomes him.
Therefore, since the devil, in inducing man to sin, had overcome man, man was bound in servitude to the devil.

(ii) A further obligation existed, namely between man and the penalty due for the sin committed and man was bound in this way in accord with the Justice of God.
This too was a servitude, for to servitude or slavery, it belongs that a man must suffer, otherwise than he chooses, since the free man is the man who uses himself as he wills.

Since then, the Passion of Christ made sufficient and, more than sufficient, Satisfaction for the sins of all mankind and for the penalty due to them, the Passion was a Price through which we were freed from both these obligations.
For the satisfaction itself, by means of which, one makes satisfaction, whether for oneself or for another, is spoken of as a price by which one redeems or buys back oneself or another, from sin and from merited penalties.
So in Holy Scripture it is said, “Redeem thou thy sins with alms” (Dan iv. 24).

Christ made Satisfaction, not indeed by a gift of money or anything material but, by a gift which was the greatest of all, by giving Himself for us.
And thus it is that the Passion of Christ is called our Redemption.

By sinning man bound himself, not to God but to the devil.
As far as concerns the guilt of what he did, he had offended God and had made himself subject to the devil, assenting to the devil’s will.
Hence, he did not, by reason of the sin committed, bind himself to God but rather, deserting God’s Service, he had fallen under the yoke of the devil.
And God, with Justice if we remember the offence committed against Him, had not prevented this.

But, if we consider the matter of the punishment earned, it was chiefly and in the first place to God that man was bound, as to the Supreme Judge.
Man was, in respect of punishment, bound to the devil only in a lesser sense, as to the torturer, as it says in the Gospel, “Lest the adversary deliver thee to the Judge and the Judge deliver thee to the officer”(Matt v. 25) that is, to the cruel minister of punishments.

Therefore, although the devil unjustly, as far as was in his power, held man whom, by his lies he had deceived, bound in slavery, held him bound both on account of the guilt and of the punishment due for it, it was nevertheless just, that man should suffer in this way.
The slavery which he suffered on account of the evils committed which God did not prevent and, the slavery he suffered as punishment God decreed!

Therefore, it was in regard to God’s Claims that Justice called for man to be Redeemed and not in regard to the devil’s hold on us.
And it was to God, the Price was paid and not to the devil.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in "Follow Me", CHRIST, the WAY,TRUTH,LIFE, DOCTORS of the Church, NOVEMBER - Month of the SOULS in PURGATORY, PURGATORY, QUOTES on ETERNAL LIFE, QUOTES on TRUTH, Thomas Aquinas

Quote/s of the Day – 7 March – The Feast of St Thomas Aquinas

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Quote/s of the Day – 7 March – The Feast of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis

“If, then, you looking for the way by which you should go,
take Christ for He, Himself is the Way.”

“But of the people, many believed in him …”
John 7:31

“Therefore, hold fast to Christ if you wish to be safe.
You will not be able to go astray because He is the Way.
He who remains with Him does not wander
in trackless places; he is on the right Way.
Moreover, he cannot be deceived
because He is the Truth and He teaches every Truth.
And He says: For this I was born and for this I have come, to bear witness to the Truth.
Nor can he be disturbed because He is both Life a
nd the giver of life. For He says: I have come
that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”

“The more one longs for a thing,
the more painful does deprivation of it become.
And because, after this life,
the desire for God, the Supreme Good,
is intense in the souls of the just –
(because this impetus toward Him,
is not hampered by the weight of the body
and that time of enjoyment,
of the Perfect Good, would have come)
had there been no obstacle.
The soul suffers enormously,
from the delay.”

“We are like children,
who stand in need of masters,
to enlighten us and direct us
and God has provided for this,
by appointing His Angels,
to be our teachers and guides.”

MORE:
https://anastpaul.com/2025/03/07/quote-s-of-the-day-7-march-st-thomas-aquinas-3/

St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Doctor of the Church

Posted in DECEMBER - The DIVINE INFANCY and The IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, HOLY WEEK, IMMACULATE CONCEPTION Prayers and Novena, LENT 2026, QUOTES on CONSCIENCE, QUOTES on the CHURCH, The IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, The PASSION, The SEVEN PASSION Feasts, Thomas Aquinas

Friday of the Second Week of Lent – 6 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Feast of the Holy Winding Sheet (the Shroud)

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Friday of the Second Week of Lent – 6 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Friday of the Second Week
Feast of the Holy Winding Sheet (the Shroud)

“Joseph taking the Body, wrapped It in a clean linen cloth and laid It in his own new monument.”
Matthew xxvii. 59

By this clean linen cloth three elements are signified in a hidden way, namely:

(i) The Pure Body of Christ.
For the cloth was made of linen which, by much pressing, is made white and,in like manner, it was after much pressure that the Body of Christ came to the brightness of the Resurrection.
Thus it behoved Christ to Suffer and to Rise again from the dead on the third day (Luke xxiv. 46).

(ii) The Church, which without spot or wrinkle (Eph v. 27), is signified by this linen woven out of many threads.

(iii) A clear conscience, where Christ reposes.

And laid Him in his own new monument.
It was Joseph’s own grave and certainly it was appropriate that He Who had Died for the sins of others, should be buried in another man’s grave!

Notice that it was a new grave.
Had other bodies already been laid in it, there might have been a doubt which had arisen.
There is another fitness in this circumstance, namely – He Who was buried in this new tomb, as He who was born of a virgin mother.

As Mary’s womb knew no child before Him nor after Him, so was it with this tomb.
Again we may understand, it is in a renewed soul renewed where Christ is buried by faith, where Christ may dwell by faith in our hearts (Eph iii. 17).

St. John’s Gospel adds, Now there was in the place where He was crucified, a garden ; and in the garden a new sepulchre (John xix. 41). Which recalls to us that as Christ was taken in a garden and suffered His agony in a garden, so in a garden was He buried, and thereby we are reminded that it was from the sin committed by Adam in the garden of delightfulness that, by the power of His Passion, Christ set us free, and also that through the Passion the Church was consecrated, the Church which again is as a garden closed.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on SACRIFICE, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Thursday of the Second Week of Lent – 5 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – That the Passion of Christ brought about its effect because it was a Sacrifice

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Thursday of the Second Week of Lent – 5 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Thursday of the Second Week
That the Passion of Christ brought about its effect
because it was a Sacrifice

A sacrifice, properly so called, is something done to render God the honour specially due to Him, in order to appease Him. St Augustine teaches this, saying, “Every work done in order that we may, in a holy union, cleave to God, is a true sacrifice; every work, that is to say, related to that final Good Whose possession alone can make us truly happy.”
Christ in the Passion offered Himself for us and it was just this circumstance – that He offered Himself wllingly which was to God the most precious thing of all, since the willingness came from the greatest possible Love. Whence it is evident, the Passion of Christ was a real Sacrifice.

And as He Himself adds later.
The former sacrifices of the saints were so many signs, of different kinds, of this One True Sacrifice. …
St Augustine speaks of four elements being found in every sacrifice, namely – Christ in the Passion offered Himself for us and it was just a person to whom the offering is made, one by whom it is made, the thing offered and those on whose behalf it is offered.
These are all found in the Passion of Our Lord. It is the same Person, the only, true Mediator Himself, Who through the sacrifice of peace reconciles us to God, yet remains One with Him to Whom He offers, those for whom He offers and is Himself One Who both offers and is offered.

It is true in those sacrifices of the old law which were types of Christ, human flesh was never offered but, it does not follow from this that the Passion of Christ was not a sacrifice.
For although the reality and that which typifies it must coincide in one point, it is not necessy that they coincide in every point, for the reality must go beyond that which typifies it.
It was then very fitting that the Sacrifice in which the Flesh of Christ is offered for us was typified by a sacrifice not of the flesh of man but of other animals, to fores-shadow the flesh of Christ which is the Most Perfect Sacrifice of all.

(i) Because, since it is the flesh of human nature which is offered, it is a thing fittingly offered for men and fittingly received by men in a Sacrament.

(ii) Because, since the Flesh of Christ was able to Suffer and to Die it was suitable for immolation.

(iii) Because, since that Flesh was itself without sin, it had a power to cleanse from sin.

(iv) Because, being the Flesh of the very Offerer, it was acceptable to God by reason of the unspeakable Love of the One Who was offering His Own Flesh.

Whence St Augustine says, “What is there more suitably received by men, of offerings made on their behalf, than human flesh and what is so suitable for immolation as mortal flesh? And what is as clean for cleansing mortal viciousness, as that flesh born, without stain of carnal desire, in the womb and of the womb of a virgin?
And what can be so graciously offered and received, as the Flesh of our Sacrifice, the Body so produced of our Priest?”

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, REDEMPTIVE Suffering, The MOST HOLY REDEEMER, Our SAVIOUR, The PASSION, The REDEMPTION, Thomas Aquinas

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent – 4 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas The Passion of Christ brought about our Salvation because it was an Act of Satisfaction

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Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent – 4 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Wednesday of the Second Week
The Passion of Christ brought about our Salvation
because it was an Act of Satisfaction

“He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours alone but also for those of the whole world.”
I John ii. 2.

Satisfaction for offences ,is truly made, when there is offered ,to the person offended, something which he loves as much as, or more than, he hates the offences.

Christ, however, by Suffering through His Love and through His Obedience, offered to God something greater by far than the satisfaction needed by all the sins of all mankind and this for three reasons.

In the first place, there was the greatness of the Love which moved Him to Suffer.
Then there was the worth of the Life which He laid down in satisfaction, the Life of God and Man.
Finally, on account of the way in which His Passion involved every part of His Being and of the greatness of the Suffering he undertook.
So it is that the Passion of Christ was not merely sufficient but superabundant as a satisfaction for man’s sins.

It would seem indeed to be the case that satisfaction should be made by the person who committed the offence. But Head and Members are, as it were, One Mystical Person and, therefore, the satisfaction made by Christ avails all the faithful as they are the Members of Christ. One man can always make satisfaction for another, as long as the two are one in charity.

  1. Although Christ, by His Death, made sufficient Satisfaction for Original Sin, it is not unfitting that the penal consequences of Original Sin should still remain even in those who are made sharers in Christ’s Redemption.
    This has been done fittingly and usefully, so that the penalties remain even though the guilt has been removed.

(i) It has been done so that there might be conformity between the faithful and Christ, as there is conformity between members and Head. Just as Christ, first of all, suffered many pains and came in this way to His Glory, so it is only right that His faithful should also first be subjected to sufferings and thence enter into immortality themselves, bearing as it were, the livery of the Passion of Christ so as to enjoy a glory somewhat like to His.

(ii) A second reason is that if men coming to Christ were straightaway freed from suffering and the necessity of death, only too many would come to Him attracted rather by these temporal advantages than by spiritual virtues.
And this would be altogether contrary to the intention of Christ, Who came into this world that He might convert men from a love of temporal advantages and win them to spiritual love and virtue.

(iii) Finally, if those who came to Christ were straightaway rendered immortal and impassible, this would, in a certain way compel men to receive the Faith of Christ and, therefore, the merit of believing would be lessened.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, Quotes on SALVATION, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent – 3 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Passion of Christ brought about our Salvationbecause it was a Meritorious Act

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Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent – 3 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Tuesday of the Second Week
The Passion of Christ brought about our Salvation
because it was a Meritorious Act

“They shall deliver Him to the Gentiles
to be Mocked and Scourged and Crucified.”
Matt xx. 19

Grace was given to Christ not only as to a particular person but also, as far as He is the Head of the Church, in order that the Grace might pass from Him to His Members. And the good works Christ performed, therefore, stand in this same way in relationship to Him and to His Members, as the good works of any other man in a State of Grace relate to himself.

Now it is evident that any man who, in a State of Grace, suffers for justice, merits for himself, by this very fact alone, salvation.
As is said in the Gospel, “Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake” (Matt v. 10).
Whence Christ, by His Passion, merited Salvation, not only for Himself but for all His Members.

Christ, indeed, from the very instant of His conception, merited eternal Salvation for us.
But there still remained certain obstacles on our part, obstacles which kept us from possessing ourselves of the effect of what Christ had merited. Wherefore, in order to remove these obstacles, it behoved Christ to Suffer (Luke xxiv. 46).

Now although the love of Christ for us was not increased in the Passion and was not greater in the Passion than before it, the Passion of Christ had a certain effect which His previous meritorious activity did not.
The Passion produced this effect, not on account of any greater Love shown thereby but because, it was an action designed to produce that effect, as is evident from what has already been said on the fitness of the Passion of Christ.

Head and Members belong to One and the same Person. Now Christ is our Head, according to His Divinity and to the fullness of His Grace which overflows upon others too. We are His Members.
What Christ then meritoriously acquires, is not something external and foreign to us but, by virtue of the unity of the Mystical Body, it overflows upon us too.

We should know too, that although Christ, by His Death acquired merit sufficient for the whole human race, there are special elements needed for the particular Salvation of each individual soul and these each soul must itself seek out. The Death of Christ is, as it were, the cause of all Salvation, as the sin of the first man was the cause of all condemnation. But if each individual man is to share in the effect of a universal cause, the universal cause needs to be specially applied to each individual man.

Now the effect of the sin of the first parents is transmitted to each individual through his bodily origin (i.e., through his being a bodily descendant of the first man).
The effect of the Death of Christ is transmitted to each man through a spiritual rebirth, a re-birth in which man is, as it were, conjoined to Christ and incorporated with Him.

Therefore, it is that each individual must seek to be born again through Christ and to receive those other elements in which works the power of the Death of Christ.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Monday of the Second Week of Lent – 2 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – It was fitting that our Lord should Suffer at the hands of the Gentiles

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Monday of the Second Week of Lent – 2 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Monday of the Second Week
It was fitting that our Lord should Suffer
at the hands of the Gentiles

“They shall deliver Him to the Gentiles
to be Mocked and Scourged and Crucified.”
Matt xx. 19

In the very manner of the Passion of Our Lord its effects are foreshadowed.
In the first place, the Passion of Our Lord had, for its effect , the salvation of Jews, many of whom were baptised in His death.

Secondly, by the preaching of these Jews, the effects of the Passion passed to the Gentiles too. There was thus, a certain fitness in Our Lord’s Passion beginning with the Jews and then, the Jews handing Him on, that it should be completed at the hands of the Gentiles.

To show the abundance of the Love which moved Him to suffer, Christ, on the very Cross, asked mercy for His tormentors. And, since He wished Jew and Gentile alike, should realise this Truth regarding His Love, so He wished that both should have a share in His Suffering.

It was the Jews and not the Gentiles who offered the figurative sacrifices of the Old Law.
The Passion of Christ was an Offering through Sacrifice, inasmuch as Christ underwent Death by His Own Will moved by Charity.
But, insofar as those who put Him to Death were concerned, they were not offering a sacrifice but committing a Mortal Sin!

When the Jews declared, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death” (John xix. 31), they may have had many areas of concern in mind.
It was not lawful for them to put anyone to death on account of the holiness of the Feast they had begun to keep. Perhaps they wished Christ to be killed not as a transgressor of their own law but as an enemy of the state, because He had made Himself a King, a charge concerning which they had no jurisdiction.
Or again, they may have meant that they had no power to crucify which was what they longed for but only to stone, as they later stoned St Stephen.
Or, the most likely thing of all, that their Roman Conquerors had taken away their power of life and death!

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in GOD is LOVE, GOD the FATHER, LENT 2026, The PASSION, The WILL of GOD, Thomas Aquinas

The Second Sunday of Lent – 1 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – God the Father Delivered Christ to His Passion

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The Second Sunday of Lent – 1 March – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

The Second Sunday
God the Father Delivered Christ to His Passion

“God spared not even His own Son but delivered Him up for us all.”
Rom viii. 32.

Christ suffered willingly, moved by obedience to His Father. Wherefore, God the Father delivered Christ to His Passion and this, in three ways:

  1. Because the Father, of His Eternal Will, preordained the Passion of Christ as the means whereby to free the human race. So it is said in Isaias, “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa liii. 6) and again, “The Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infirmity” (ibid liii. 10).
  2. Because He inspired Our Lord with the willingness to suffer for us, pouring into His Soul the Love which produced the will to suffer. Whence the Prophet goes on to say, “He was offered because it was His Own Will” (Isa liii. 7).
  3. Because He did not protect Our Lord from the Passion but exposed Him to His persecutors. Whence we read in St Matthew’s Gospel: as He hung on the cross Christ said, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me” (Matt xxvii. 46). For God the Father, that is to say, had left Him at the mercy of His torturers.

To hand over an innocent man to suffering and to death, against his will, compelling him to die as it were, would indeed be cruel and wicked.
But it was not in this way God the Father delivered Christ. He delivered Christ by inspiring Him with the Will to suffer for us. By so doing, the severity of God is made clear – no sin is forgiven without punishment! which St Paul again teaches when he says, God spared not His Own Son.

At the same time God’s kindness and goodness is exhibited in the fact that whereas man could not, no matter what his punishment, sufficiently make satisfaction, God has given man someone Who is able to make that satisfaction for him. Which is what St Paul means by, He delivered Him up for us all and again when he says, God hath proposed Christ to be an appeasement through faith in His Blood (Rom iii. 25).
The same activity in a good man and in a bad man is differently judged, inasmuch as the root from which it proceeds is different.
The Father, for example, delivered Christ and Christ delivered Himself and this from love and, therefore, They are praised.

Judas delivered Him from love of gain, the Jews from hatred, Pilate from the worldly fear with which he feared Caesar and these are rightly regarded with horror.
Christ, therefore, did not owe to death the debt of necessity but of Charity – the Charity to men by which He willed their Salvation and the Charity to God, by which He willed to fulfil God’s Will, as it says in the Gospel, “Not as I Will but as Thou Wilt (Matt xx vi. 39).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in GOD is LOVE, LENT 2026, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Saturday of the First Week of Lent – 28 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Love of God Exhibited in the Passion of Christ

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Saturday of the First Week of Lent – 28 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Saturday of the First Week
The Love of God
Exhibited in the Passion of Christ

“God commendeth His charity towards us because when, as yet we were sinners, according to the time, Christ died for us.”
Rom v 8, 9

  1. “Christ died for the ungodly” (ibid 6
    This is a great thing if we consider Who it is Who died, a great thing too if we consider on whose behalf He died.
    For scarcely for a just man, will one die (ibid 6), that is to say that you will not find anyone who will die even to set free a man who is innocent, nay even, it is said, “The just perisheth and no man layeth it to heart” (Isaias l vii).

Rightly, therefore, does St.Paul say scarcely will one die. There might perhaps be found one, someone rare person, who out of sa uperabundance of courage, would be so bold as to die for a good man. But this is rare, for the simple reason that so to act is the greatest of all things. “Greater love than this, no man hath, says Our Lord Himself, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John xv. 13).

But the like of that which Christ Himself did, to die for evildoers and the wicked, has never been seen.
Wherefore rightly do we ask in wonderment, why Christ did this.

  1. If in fact it be asked, why Christ died for the wicked, the answer is that God, in this way, commendeth His Charity towards us. He exhibits to us in this way that He Loves us with a Love which knows no limits, for while we were as yet sinners, Christ died for us.

The very death of Christ for us, depicts the Love of God, for it was His Son Whom He gave to die that satisfaction might be made for us. God so Loved the world, as to give His Only Begotten Son (John iii. 16).
And thus, as the Love of God the Father for us is proved in His giving us His Holy Spirit, so also is it proved in this way, by His Gift of His Only Son.

The Apostle says, God commendeth, signifying thereby that the Love of God cannot be measured. This is exhibited by the very fact of the matter, namely the fact that He gave His Son to die for us and it is proved too by reason of the kind of people we are, for whom He died.
“Christ was not stirred up to die for us by any merits of ours, when as yet we were sinners. God (who is rich in mercy) for His exceeding Charity wherewith He Loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ ” (Eph ii. 4).

  1. All this is almost too much to be believed.
    “A work is done in your days which no man will believe when it shall be told” (Habac i. 5).
    This Truth that Christ died for us is so difficult a Truth that scarcely can our intellect grasp it. Nay it is a Truth which our intellect can, in no way understand.
    And St Paul preaching, makes echo to Habacuc, I work a work in your days, a work which you will not believe, if any man shall tell it to you (Acts xiii 14).

So great is God’s Love for us and His Grace towards us that He does more for us than we can believe or understand.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in JULY - The MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD, LENT 2026, The MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD, The PASSION, The SEVEN PASSION Feasts, Thomas Aquinas

Friday of the First Week of Lent – 27 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – The Feast of the Holy Lance and Nails of Our Lord

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Friday of the First Week of Lent – 27 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Friday After First Sunday
The Feast of the Holy Lance Lance
and the Nails of Our Lord

“One of the soldiers opened His side with a spear and immediately there came forth Blood and Water.”
John xix. 34.

  1. The Gospel deliberately says opened and not wounded because, through Our Lord’s Side, there was opened to us the Gate of Eternal Life.
    “ After these things I looked and behold, a gate was opened in heaven,” (Apoc iv. i). This is the door opened in the ark, through which enter the animals who will not perish in the flood.
  2. But this door is the cause of our salvation.
    Immediately there came forth Blood and Water a thing truly miraculous that, from a dead body, in which the blood congeals, Blood should come forth!

This was done to show that by the Passion of Christ we receive a full absolution, an absolution from every sin and every stain. We receive this absolution from sin through that Blood which is the price of our redemption. You were not redeemed with corruptible things as gold or silver, from your vain conversation with the tradition of your fathers but with the Precious Blood of Christ, as of a lamb unspotted and undefiled (i Pet i. 18).

We were absolved from every stain by the Water which is the laver of our redemption.
In the Prophet Ezechiel, it is said, “I will pour upon you clean water and you shall be cleaned from all your
filthiness” (Ezech xxxvi. 28) and in Zacharias,
“There shall be a fountain open to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for the washing of the sinner and the unclean woman” (Zach xiii. i).

And so, these two things may be thought of in relation to two of the Sacraments, the Water to Baptism and the Blood to the Holy Eucharist.
Or both may be referred to the Holy Eucharist since, in the Mass, water is mixed with the wine. Although the water is not of the substance of the Sacrament.

Again, as from the side of Christ asleep in death on the Cross there flowed that Blood and Water in which the Church is consecrated, so from the side of the sleeping Adam was formed the first woman, who herself foreshadowed the Church.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in DOCTORS of the Church, FATHERS of the Church, LENT 2026, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Thursday of the First Week of Lent – 26 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – It was fitting that Christ should be Crucified with the Thieves

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Thursday of the First Week of Lent – 26 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Thursday of the First Week of Lent
It was fitting that Christ
should be Crucified with the Thieves

Christ was Crucified between the thieves because such was the will of the Jews and also because, this was part of God’s Design.
But the reasons why this was appointed, were not the same in each of these cases.

  1. As far as the Jews were concerned, Our Lord was Crucified with the thieves on either side to encourage the suspicion that He too was a criminal.
    But it transpired otherwise!
    The thieves themselves have left not a trace in the remembrance of man, while His Cross is everywhere held in honour. Kings lying their crowns aside, have embroidered the Cross on their Royal robes. They have placed it on their crowns; on their armiur. It has its place on the very Altars. Everywhere, throughout the world, we behold the splendour of the Cross.

In God’s Plan, Christ was Crucified with the thieves in order, for our sakes, He became accursed of the Cross, so, for our salvation, He is Cucified like an evil Man amongst evil men.

  1. The Pope, St Leo the Great, says that the thieves were crucified, one on either side of Our Lord, so that, in the very appearance of the scene of His Suffering, there might be set forth that distinction which should be made in the judgement of each one of us.
    St Augustine has the same thought. “The Cross itself,” he says, “was a tribunal. In the centre was the Judge. To the one side a man who believed and was set free, to the other side, a scoffer and he was condemned.”
    Already there was made clear the final fate of the living and the dead, the one class placed at His Right, the other on His Left.
  2. According to St Hilary, the two thieves, placed to right and to left, typify that the whole of mankind is called to the mystery of Our Lord’s Passion. And, since division of things, according to right and left is made with reference to believers and those who will not believe, one of the two, placed on the right, is saved by justifying faith.
  3. As St Bede says, the thieves who were crucified with Our Lord, represent those who, for the faith and to confess Christ, undergo the agony of martyrdom or the severe discipline of a more perfect life.
    Those who do this for the sake of eternal glory are typified by the thief on the Right Hand.
    Those whose motive is the admiration of whoever beholds them, imitate the spirit and the act of the thief on the Left Hand.

As Christ owed no debt in payment for which a man must die but submitted to death of His Own Will, in order to overcome death, so also, He had not done anything on account of which He deserved to be put with the thieves.
But of His Own Will, He chose to be reckoned among the wicked that by His Power, He might destroy wickedness itself.
Which is why St John Chrysostom says, to convert the thief on the cross and to turn him to Paradise, was as great a miracle as the earthquake!

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on SUFFERING, The PASSION, Thomas Aquinas

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent – 24 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Christ underwent every kind of suffering

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Tuesday of the First Week of Lent – 24 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Tuesday of the First Week :
Christ underwent every kind of suffering

“Every kind of suffering.”
The things men suffer may be understood in two ways.
By “kind” we may mean a particular, individual suffering and in this sense, there was no reason why Christ should suffer every kind of suffering, for many kinds of sufferings are contrary, one to the other, as for example, to be burnt and to be drowned.
We are of course, speaking of Our Lord as suffering from causes outside Himself, for to suffer the suffering effected by internal causes, such as bodily illness, would not have become Him.
But, if by “kind” we mean, the class, then Our Lord did suffer by every kind of suffering, as we can show in three ways:

  1. By considering the men through whom He suffered.
    For He suffered something at the hands of Gentiles and of Jews, of men and even of women as the story of the servant girl who accused St.Peter goes to show.
    He suffered, again, at the hands of Rulers, of their Ministers, and of the people, as was prophesied, Why have the Gentiles raged and the people devised vain things? The Kings of the earth stood up and the Princes met together against the Lord and against His Christ (Ps ii. i, 2).
    He suffered, too, from His friends, the men He knew best, for Peter denied Him and Judas betrayed Him.
  2. If we consider the things through which suffering is possible. Christ suffered in the friends who deserted Him and in His good name through the blasphemies uttered against Him.
    He suffered in the respect, in the glory, due to Him through the derision and contempt bestowed upon Him.
    He suffered in all things, for He was stripped even of His clothing; in His soul, through sadness, through weariness and through fear; in His body through wounds and the scourging.
  3. If we consider what He underwent in His various members. His head suffered through the Crown of piercing Thorns, His hands and feet, through the nails driven through them, His face from the blows and the defiling spittle and His whole body through the scourging.

He suffered in every sense of His body.
Touch was afflicted by the scourging and the nailing, taste by the vinegar and gall, smell by the stench of corpses as He hung on the Cross in that place of the dead which is called Calvary.
His hearing was torn with the voices of mockers and blasphemers and He saw the tears of His Mother and of the disciple whom He loved.
If we only consider the amount of suffering required, it is true that one suffering alone, the least indeed of all, would have sufficed to redeem the human race from all its sins. But if we look at the fitness of the matter, it had to be that Christ should suffer in all the kinds of sufferings.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, QUOTES on TEMPTATION, QUOTES on the DEVIL/EVIL, Thomas Aquinas

Monday of the First Week of Lent – 23 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas

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Monday of the First Week of Lent – 23 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Doctor of the Church

Monday of the First Week :
Christ had to be tempted in the desert

“He was in the desert 40 days and 40 nights and was tempted by satan.”
Mark i. 13.

  1. It was by Christ’s Own Will that He was exposed to the temptation by the devil, as it was also, by His Own Will that He was exposed to be slain by the limbs of the devil. Had He not so willed, the devil would never have dared to approach Him.

The devil is always more disposed to attack those who are alone because, as is said in Sacred Scripture: “If a man shall prevail against one, two shall withstand him easily (Eccles iv. 12).
This is why Christ went out into the desert, as one going out to a battleground, that there, He might be tempted by the devil. Whereupon St Ambrose says, Christ went into the desert for the express purpose of provoking the devil. For unless the devil had fought, Christ would never have overcome him for me!

St Ambrose gives other reasons too. He says Christ chose the desert as the place to be tempted for a hidden reason, namely, that He might free Adam from his exile who, from Paradise, was driven into the desert and again, that He did it for a reason in which there is no mystery, namely, to show us that the devil envies those who are tending towards a better life.

  1. We say with St Chrysostom that Christ exposed Himself to the temptation because the devil, most of all, tempts those whom he sees alone.
    So in the very beginning of things, he tempted the woman, when he found her away from her husband. It does not however follow from this that a man ought to throw himself into any occasion of temptation which presents itself.

Occasions of temptation are of two kinds.
One kind arises from man’s own action, when, for example, man himself goes near to sin, not avoiding the occasion of sin.
That such occasions are to be avoided we know and Holy Scripture reminds us of it. “Stay not in any part of the country round about Sodom” (Gen xix. 17).
The second kind of occasion arises from the devil’s constant envy of those who are tending to better things, as St Ambrose says and this occasion of temptation is not one we must avoid.
So, according to St John Chrysostom, not only Christ was led into the desert by the Holy Ghost but all the children of God who possess the Holy Ghost are led in like manner. For God’s children are never content to sit down with idle hands but the Holy Ghost ever urges them to undertake for God some great work. And this, as far as the devil is concerned, is to go into the desert, for in the desert, there is none of that wickedness in which the devil’s delight.
Every good work is, as it were, a desert to the eye of the world and of our flesh, for good works are contrary to the desire of the world.

To give the devil such an opportunity of temptation as this is not dangerous, for it is much more the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, Who is the promoter of every perfect work which prompts us, than the working of the devil, who hates them all.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in AUGUSTINIANS OSA, CHRIST the HIGH PRIEST, CHRIST the WORD and WISDOM, DOCTORS of the Church, LENT 2026, QUOTES on TEMPTATION, The WORD, Thomas Aquinas

The First Sunday of Lent – 22 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Christ willed to be tempted

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The First Sunday of Lent – 22 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Doctor of the Church

The First Week of Lent – Sunday

It was fitting that Christ should be tempted

“Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert,
to be tempted by the devil.”
Matt iv. i

Christ willed to be tempted:

  1. That He might assist us against our own temptations.
    St Gregory says: “That our Redeemer, Who had come to earth to be killed, should will to be tempted, was not unworthy of Him. It was. indeed but just that He should overcome our temptations by His own, in the same way that He had come to overcome our death by His death.”
  2. To warn us that no man, however holy he be, should think himself safe and free from temptation.
    Whence again, His choosing to be tempted after His Baptism, about which St Hilary says: “The devil’s wiles are especially directed to trap us at times when we have recently been made holy because the devil desires no victory as much as a victory over the world of Grace.”
    Whence too, the Scripture warns us, “Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear and prepare thy soul for temptation” (Ecclus ii. i).
  3. To give us an example of how we should overcome the temptations of the devil, St Augustine says: “Christ gave Himself to the devil to be tempted that, in the matter of our overcoming those same temptations, He might be of service, not only by His assistance but too, by His example.”
  4. To fill and saturate our minds with confidence in His Mercy.
    “For we have not a High Priest Who cannot have compassion on our infirmities but One , without sin but ttempted in all things, like as we are, (Heb iv. 15).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in CHRIST the WORD and WISDOM, LENT 2026, The SACRED PASSION - Meditations for LENT, The WORD, Thomas Aquinas

Saturday after Ash Wednesday – 21 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Saturday : The Grain of Wheat

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Saturday after Ash Wednesday – 21 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Doctor of the Church

Saturday : The Grain of Wheat

“Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone.”
John xii. 24

We use the grain of wheat in two ways, for bread and for seed. Here the Word is to be taken in the second sense, grain of wheat meaning seed and not the matter out of which we make bread. For in this sense it never increases, so as to bear fruit.
When it is said that the grain must die, this does not mean that it loses its value as seed but that it is changed into another kind of thing. So St Paul (i Cor xv. 36) says, “That which then thou sowest is not quickened, except it die first.”

The Word of God is a seed in the soul of man, insofar as it is a thing introduced into man’s soul, by words spoken and heard, in order to produce the fruit of good works.
The seed is the Word of God (Luke viii. II). So also the Word of God garbed in Flesh is a Seed placed in the world, a Seed from which great crops should grow, whence it is compared in St Matthew’s Gospel (xiii. 31, 32) to a grain of mustard seed.

Our Lord, therefore, says to us, “I came as Seed, something meant to bear fruit and, therefore, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, itself remaineth alone” which is, as much as to say, “Unless I die, the fruit of the conversion of the Gentiles, will not follow.”
He compares Himself to a grain of wheat because He came to nourish and to sustain the minds of men and to nourish and sustain are precisely what wheaten bread does for men. In the Psalms it is written, That bread may strengthen man’s heart (Ps ciii. 15) and in St John, The bread that I will give is My Flesh for the life of the world(John vi. 52).

  1. “But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit” (John xii. 25). What is here explained is the usefulness of the Passion. It is as though the Gospel said, Unless the grain fall into the earth through the humiliations of the Passion, no useful result will follow, for the grain itself remaineth alone. But if it shall die, done to death and slain by the Jews, it bringeth forth much fruit, for example:

(i) The remission of sin.
This is the whole fruit, that the sin thereby should be taken away (Isaias xxvii. 9). And this is the fruit of the Passion of Christ as is declared by St Peter – Christ died once for our sins, the just for the unjust that He might offer us to God (i Pet iii. 18).

(ii) The conversion of the Gentiles to God.
“ I have appointed you that you shall go forth and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain” (John xv. 16). This fruit the Passion of Christ bore, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to myself (John xii. 32).

(iii) The fruit of Glory.
The fruit of good labours is glorious (Wis. iii. 15).
And this fruit too, the Passion of Christ brough forth; We have, therefore, a confidence in the entering into the Holies by the Blood of Christ – a new and living way which He hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, His Flesh (Hebr x. 19).

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in LENT 2026, The SEVEN PASSION Feasts, Thomas Aquinas

Friday – 20 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – 

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Ash Friday – 20 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Doctor of the Church

Friday : The Crown of Thorns

“Go forth, ye daughters of Sion and see King Solomon in the diadem, wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the joy of his heart.”
Cant iii. n.

This is the voice of the Church inviting the souls of the faithful to behold the marvellous beauty of her Spouse. For the daughters of Sion, who are they but the daughters of Jerusalem, holy souls, the citizens of that City which is above, who with the Angels enjoy the peace which knows no end and, in consequence, look upon the glory of the Lord?

  1. Go forth, shake off the disturbing commerce of this world so that, with minds set free, you may be able to contemplate Him Whom you love. And see King Solomon, the true Peacemaker, that is to say, Christ Our Lord.

In the diadem wherewith his mother crowned him, as though the Church said, “Look on Christ garbed with Flesh for us, the Flesh He took from the flesh of His Mother.” For it is His Flesh which is here called a Diadem, the Flesh which Christ assumed for us, the Flesh in which He died and destroyed the reign of death, the Flesh in which, rising once again, He brought to us the hope of resurrection.

This is the Diadem of which St.Paul speaks, We see Jesus for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour (Heb ii. 9). His Mother is spoken of as crowning Him because Mary the Virgin it was, who from her own flesh gave Him Flesh.

In the day of His espousals, that is, in the hour of His Incarnation, when He took to Himself the Church not having spot or wrinkle (Eph v. 27), the hour again when God was joined with man.
And in the day of the joy of His heart. For the joy and the gaiety of Christ, is for the human race, salvation and redemption. And coming home, He calls together His friends and neighbours saying to them, Rejoice with Me because I have found My sheep which was lost (Luke xv. 6).

  1. We can, however, refer the whole of this text simply and literally, to the Passion of Christ. For Solomon, foreseeing through the centuries the Passion of Christ, was uttering a warning for the daughters of Sion, that is, for the Jewish people.

Go forth and see King Solomon, that is, Christ, in His Diadem, that is to say, the Crown of Thorns, with which His Mother, the Synagogue has crowned Him; in the day of His espousals, the day when He joined to Himself the Church and in the day of the joy of His heart, the day in which He rejoiced that by His Passion, He was delivering the world from the power of the devil.
Go forth, therefore, and leave behind the darkness of unbelief and see, understand with your minds, He Who suffers as Man is really God!

Go forth, beyond the gates of your City, that you may see Him, on Mount Calvary, Crucified.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in CONFESSION/PENANCE, LENT 2026, QUOTES on REPARATION/EXPIATION, Thomas Aquinas

Thursday – 19 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas – Fasting

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Ash Thursday – 19 February – Our Lenten Journey With St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Doctor of the Church

Thursday : Fasting

  1. We fast for three reasons.

(i) To check the desires of the flesh. So St Paul says in fastings, in chastity (2 Cor vi. 5), meaning that fasting is a safeguard for chastity. As St Jerome says, “Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus would freeze,” as much as to say, lust loses its heat through spareness of food and drink.

(ii) That the mind may more freely raise itself to contemplation of the heights. We read in the book of Daniel that it was after a fast of three weeks that he received the revelation from God (Dan x. 2-4).

(iii) To make satisfaction for sin. This is the reason given by the Prophet Joel, Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting and in weeping and in mourning (Joel ii. 12). And here is what St Augustine writes on the matter. “Fasting purifies the soul. It lifts up the mind and it brings the body into subjection to the spirit. It makes the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of desire, puts out the flames of lust and shines the true light of chastity.”

  1. There is a commandment laid on us to fast. For fasting helps to destroy sin and to raise the mind to thoughts of the spiritual world. Each man is then bound, by the natural law of the matter, to fast just as much as is necessary to help him in these matters. Which is to say, fasting in general is a matter of natural law. To determine, however, when we shall fast and how, according to what suits and is of use to the Catholic body, is a matter of positive law. To state the positive law is the business of the Bishops and what is thus stated by them is called Ecclesiastical fasting, in contradistinction with the natural fasting previously mentioned.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274)
Priest, Theologian, Dominican
Doctor Angelicus (Angelic Doctor)
Doctor Communis (Common Doctor)
Added by Pope Saint Pius V in 1568

Posted in DOCTORS of the Church, GOD ALONE!, LENT 2026, Our MORNING Offering, QUOTES on LOVE of GOD, QUOTES on WATCHING, QUOTES on WISDOM, The FAITHFUL on PILGRIMAGE, Thomas Aquinas

Our Morning Offering – 19 February – Grant Me, My God By St Thomas Aquinas

Posted on by AnaStpaul

Our Morning Offering – 19 February – Ash Thursday

Grant Me, My God
By St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Angelic Doctor, Common Doctor

Make my heart watchful, O God,
so that no vain thoughts may distract it from Thee.
Make it noble,
so that it may never be seduced by any base affection.
Make it steadfast,
so that troubles may not dismay it.
Make it free,
so that it may not yield to the onslaughts of passion.
Grant me, my God,
the intelligence, to understand Thee,
the love, to seek Thee,
the wisdom, to find Thee,
words, to please Thee,
the perseverance, to wait faithfully for Thee
and, the hope of embracing Thee, at last.
Grant that I, a repentant sinner,
may bear Thy chastisements with resignation.
Poor pilgrim which I am,
may I draw on the treasury of Thine grace
and may I one day,
be eternally happy with Thee in Heavenly glory!
Amen.