Aquinas for President

Trying to look, listen, and learn from others

10/09/2024

LK 10:38-42 Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me.”  The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

One of my favorite anecdotes about St. Thomas Aquinas was while he was studying to become a Dominican friar. He was rather large in stature and rarely spoke, so his Dominican brothers gave him the nickname, “the Dumb Ox.” One day, they decided to pull a prank on Thomas. Three brothers stood by the monastery window looking outside with eyes wide open and pointing in amazement. When one saw Thomas walking down the hall, he shouted: “Thomas come quickly! Look! Cows are flying!”

Thomas lumbered to the window as quickly as he could to look at this unusual sight, but alas, he saw nothing strange. The three brothers laughed loudly and guffawed at Thomas’ gullibility. Then the Dumb Ox turned back from the window and said, “I would rather believe that cows can fly than that brothers would lie.”

A few days later all the Dominican students were in class, and their teacher was St. Albert the Great. He was aware of the nickname and jokes the student played on Thomas. He said to the class of future mendicants: “You may call Thomas the Dumb Ox. But I tell you that one day this ox will bellow so loudly that he will be heard all over the world.” Indeed, we still study the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in the seminary today, 800 years after his death.

I mention this anecdote about Aquinas because even though he had a lot to say, he was first of all silent. That is, his first instinct was to be quiet, to listen, to look, to learn, to perceive, to penetrate, to understand, long before he opened his mouth to speak.

There is an ancient Latin maxim that teaches: “nemo dat quod non

habet,” meaning “you cannot give what you do not have.” Thomas Aquinas gave the world great treasures of wisdom, but first he adopted a posture of quiet contemplation and receptivity. First silence, second speak.

Both readings today touch on the topic of quiet contemplation. In Galatians 1, St. Paul recounts what he did shortly after his dramatic encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus. The Apostle to the Gentiles writes: “I did not immediately consult flesh and blood…rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus.” St. Paul first traveled to the site of Mt. Sinai where Moses spoke to God so that St. Paul could receive his marching orders directly from God, too.

And we are all familiar with the gospel, where Mary strikes a pose of quiet contemplation while her sister Martha is over-busy with housework. In other words, the great saints always had the attitude of the Dumb Ox and desired first to listen, to look, and to learn. Why? Because “nemo dat quod non habet,” you cannot give what you do not have.

Let me make a brief application of this attitude of quiet contemplation to our toxic political environment today. What makes it so difficult for me to listen to the rhetoric from both Republicans and Democrats is that everyone is talking and no one is listening, or looking, or trying to learn from each other. Each side is behaving like the immature brothers of St. Thomas, trying to make fun of the other party and make them look foolish.

Both sides are guilty of doing whatever it takes to get into office and maintaining that power. And we, you and I, are complicit in encouraging this rhetoric to the extent that we are only interested in promoting our own agenda. Very little civility or sanity is left in our modern political discourse.

My recommendation, therefore, would be to take a page out of the book of Dumb Ox, that is, instead of shouting or more campaigning, take time to stop, to look, and to listen. Try to hear what both sides are saying and sift the wheat from the chaff, and then blow away the chaff.

I believe both parties promote issues that have value and protect the common good, especially in serving the most vulnerable in our society, the unborn baby and the undocumented immigrant. But the way things currently stand, I am afraid no one would vote for him if Aquinas ran for president. They would just call him, “the Dumb Ox.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!