"It's All Chaff!"

On December 6th, 1273, the Feast of Saint Nicolas, in the last year of his life, Thomas Aquinas put down his quill and stopped writing. He had a vision in prayer, "I have seen things which make all my writing like straw."

His beloved friend, Reginald begged him to write, to finish his Great Work, the Sum of All Theology. What?! Thomas wanted to stop before the work was complete? This was unexpected... 

In Advent we encounter many ways that God overturns and surpasses our expectations. Jesus is the King Who was prophesied, but not the political savior who was expected. What is genuinely in line with God’s will, as expressed in Scripture and Sacred Tradition, may not meet our expectations either. That’s because God sees what we cannot see and does more than we know to desire.

Here are some Scripture passages that express God’s overturning of our expectations, with reflections on how they apply to BCF’s work.

God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong. One of the most unexpected elements of BCF’s method is simply that we help you approach gay people as potential missionary disciples! We start from the assumption that there are elements in gay people’s experience, including their experience as gay people, that can be illuminated by Catholic wisdom and invite them into deeper relationship with Jesus. And we start from the assumption that gay people are not the objects of well-intentioned pastoral care, but missionaries and potential missionaries in their own right, whose insights and gifts are meant to enrich the Church.

My kingdom is not of this world. The two most common Catholic approaches to gay people right now are a sexual-morality approach focusing on chastity, and a social-justice approach focusing on oppression. Both of these approaches hold wisdom, and each of them has helped people. But both of them start with morality, rather than with the bedrock—the reason we trust Catholic morality in the first place!—which is the relationship with Jesus. BCF gives priests, parents, teachers, and mentors ideas for new places to begin, which can speak to a broader range of needs and guide seekers to a personal encounter with the Lord.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. When gay people trust Catholics to see our whole lives, not just our sexuality, we can begin to trust the Catholics’ Jesus. And when we trust Jesus as Lord, we can give our whole lives to him with gladness.

Thomas Aquinas passed into eternity a few short months later, having written nothing more. His students finished his Great Work under his inspiration, which is why the last part of the Summa is called The Supplement.

Thomas's silence reflects his intellectual humility, grounded in his awe at the greatness of God. His students' completion of his work reflects their humility as well, and their desire to serve the Church. God calls us to both of these responses: to contemplation that becomes ecstasy, and work that becomes charity.

St Thomas, image courtesy PICRYL

In the Middle Ages, chaff and straw were what make bricks strong. We love this icon of Thomas Aquinas, because he is cradling his Great Work in one arm and the strongly built Church in the other.