Today’s Gospel is a continuation of the one from yesterday’s Mass. Jesus reminds His disciples that we shouldn’t take the knowledge of who Jesus is, place it under a basket and hide it; we let that light shine for the whole world to see. He did not mean for these parables to be some hidden knowledge just for Christians but so that God might reveal his Son to the world.
Faith is a gift from God. It’s also an action, a verb. We respond to faith by living out the faith God has given to us through the Church. That’s what it means to be a “practicing Catholic.” We are working daily to grow in that faith, to grow in knowledge and holiness that we might draw nearer to Jesus Himself.
“To the one who has, more will be given.” God is infinite, and while we can never fully contain a complete understanding of His glory in our human minds, He can give us further glimpses of His love and mercy. The closer we get to God, the deeper we swim in the sea of our faith, the more profound our relationship with God gets.
Our Saint for today, a doctor of the Church, and maybe one of the brightest philosophical minds the world has ever known is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Thomas spent his life studying, writing, and speaking about God and always asking questions. He was working on a brilliant book that we still use today to teach about our faith and God. The Summa Theologica, the Summary of all Theology. Then one day at Mass, he experienced a revelation of Christ so intense that he just quit writing altogether.
Saint Thomas took all of his writings and placed them at the foot of a crucifix, and said: “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much waste after the things that have been revealed to me. ” When he was asked, “Master, will you not return to your work?” He responded, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” Thomas had so much already with all of his knowledge, his priesthood, his friends. By worldly standards, everything was taken away. The masterpiece he had labored so long to complete was now sitting idle and no longer his focus. The world would make that seem like a failure, to end such a long endeavor incomplete. But in terms of faith, Saint Thomas was given the greatest gift of all. “To one who had much, even more, was given.”
Yesterday I spoke about how we study to grow in faith and knowledge about Jesus. It’s because we are in a relationship so intimate that we literally receive Him into our bodies in the Eucharist. He then begins to change us, reveal to us more and more. The goal is not to accumulate awards and certificates, doctorates and degrees. It’s to learn more about the one we love. When we love someone, we want to know as much as we can about them. What makes them happy, what makes them sad, what they love, and what they dislike. So we learn about Jesus, who we are united to, hoping that we too can experience Him more fully. In a way that changes how we view the universe, the world, and even ourselves.
What does that mean to you and me today? Most of us aren’t writing massive volumes of theology, but in a way, we are writing the story of our lives through our choices. In the Mass during the liturgy of the Eucharist, Jesus stands before us at the altar, offering Himself to the Father. Even if we can’t see it or feel it, we experience the same encounter Saint Thomas had. Let’s remember as we come forward, gaze up at the host elevated before our eyes, that our Amen should mean “I place the volume of my life, the story of my existence, all that I am and have, the good and the bad, at the foot of the cross.”
Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church: January 28th, 2021