Thinking and Drinking

Enjoying a portrait of three saints

09/13/2022

Lk 7:11-17 Jesus journeyed to a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd accompanied him. As he drew near to the gate of the city, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, "Do not weep." He stepped forward and touched the coffin; at this the bearers halted, and he said, "Young man, I tell you, arise!" The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, exclaiming, "A great prophet has arisen in our midst," and "God has visited his people." This report about him spread through the whole of Judea and in all the surrounding region.

Today I want to tell you about three saints through the perspective and pen of G. K. Chesterton. Have you ever read any Chesterton? If you haven’t, you are missing out because his prose is better than most people’s poetry. Let me share his lengthy description of the meeting of three saints: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Louis of France, and St. John Chrysostom, today’s feast day. This is a very long quotation taken from Chesterton’s book on St. Thomas Aquinas, so please be patient.

Chesterton wrote: “There is one casual anecdote about St. Thomas Aquinas which illuminates him like a lightning flash, not only without but within. For it not only shows him as a character, and even as a comedy character, and shows the colors of his period and social background; but also as if for an instant, makes a transparency of his mind. It is a trivial incident which occurred one day, when he was reluctantly dragged from his work, and we might say almost from his play. For both were for him found in the unusual hobby of thinking, which is for some men a thing much more intoxicating than mere drinking.” By the way, that is how I feel at 4:30 in the morning when I get up to write my homilies: thinking is more intoxicating than drinking.

Chesterton continues: “[Aquinas] had declined any number of society invitations, to the courts of kings and princes, not because he was unfriendly, for he was not; but because he was always glowing within with the really gigantic plans of exposition and argument which filled his life. On one occasion, however, he was invited to the court of King Louis IX of France, more famous as the great St. Louis; and for some reason or other, the Dominican authorities of his Order told him to accept; so he immediately did so, being an obedient friar even in his sleep; or rather in his permanent trance of reflection.” By the way, you may remember we celebrated the feast of St. Louis of France on August 25. He was the king who built my favorite church, Sainte Chapelle, to house the Crown of Thorns.

We pick up Chesterton a paragraph later, and get to the important part about St. John Chrysostom. Chesterton continues: “Pairs was truly at that time an aurora borealis; a Sunrise in the North. We must realize that lands much nearer to Rome had rotted with paganism and pessimism and Oriental influences of which the most respectable was that of [Mohammed]. Provence and all the South had been full of a fever of nihilism or negative mysticism, and from Northern France had come the spears and swords that swept away the unchristian thing.

“In Northern France also sprang up that splendor of building that shine like swords and spears: the first spires of the Gothic. We talk now of grey Gothic buildings; but they must have been very different when they went up white and gleaming into the northern skies, partly picked out by gold and bright colors; a new flight of architecture, as startling as flying ships. The new Paris ultimately left behind by St. Louis must have been a thing white like lilies and splendid as the oriflamme.” By the way, it is easy for us in Fort Smith to imagine Gothic architecture because I.C. church has a lot of Gothic touches and overtones.

Chesterton continues: “It was the beginning of the great new thing: the nation of France, which was to pierce and overpower the old quarrel of Pope and Emperor in the lands from which Thomas came (Italy). But Thomas came very unwillingly, and, if we may say it of so kindly a man, rather sulkily. As he entered Paris, they showed him from the hill that splendor of new spires beginning, and somebody said something like, ‘How grand it must be to own all this.’ And Thomas Aquinas only muttered, ‘I would rather have that Chrysostom [manuscript] I can’t get hold of.’” In other words, Chrysostom was patriarch of Constantinople and a prolific writer in the 4th century, but a lot of his writings were lost.

So, that is the portrait Chesterton paints with his pen of three saints: St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Louis of France, and St. John Chrysostom. Our take-away question for us today is this: which would you rather have: the aurora borealis, or the lost manuscript of Chrysostom? The answer to that question may be why they are saints and we are not.

Praised be Jesus Christ!