While attending Mass in another parish for the anniversary of passing of an Aunt, the Priest's commentary during the Homily got me thinking. Why did St Thomas Aquinas cease to complete his Summa Theologica
The priest said that St Thomas had a vision and such ...that revealed everything he had written was 'nothing' after the vision.
I listened intently for further information but only questions were posed from the only clue we have from St Thomas himself .." Such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw."
Did the vision reveal that too much time and effort is put into defining and not enough into worship?
To quote Thomas 'a Kempis, "I would rather have compunction of heart than to know what compunction means." Logic, reason, science, etc.
What was that vision St Aquinas saw?
The realization that his time had come?
but must have had something to make him stop writing....
The vision of Heaven?
We are given a clue in his earlier writings ~
Wikipedia ~ The Beatific VisionThe only perfect and infinite good, therefore, is God himself, ....Aquinas argues that our perfect happiness and final end can only be the direct union with God himself and not with any created image of him. This union comes about by a kind of "seeing" perfectly the divine essence itself, a gift given to our intellects when God joins them directly to himself without any intermediary. And since in seeing this perfect vision of what (and who) God is, we grasp also his perfect goodness, this act of "seeing" is at the same time a perfect act of loving God as the highest and infinite goodness.[13]
According to Aquinas, the Beatific Vision surpasses both faith and reason. Rational knowledge does not fully satisfy humankind's innate desire to know God, since reason is primarily concerned with sensible objects and thus can only infer its conclusions about God indirectly. Summa Theologiae
The theological virtue of faith, too, is incomplete, since Aquinas thinks that it always implies some imperfection in the understanding. The believer does not wish to remain merely on the level of faith but to grasp directly the object of faith, who is God himself. Summa Contra Gentiles
Thus only the fullness of the Beatific Vision satisfies this fundamental desire of the human soul to know God. Quoting St Paul, Aquinas notes "We see now in a glass darkly, but then face to face" (i Cor. 13:12). The Beatific Vision is the final reward for those saints elect by God to partake in and "enjoy the same happiness wherewith God is happy, seeing Him in the way which He sees Himself" in the next life. Summa Contra Gentiles
St. Thomas Aquinas was called to defend the unity of man's mind. Siger of Brabant's theology seemed to say a statement could be true in theology although false in philosophy. Aquinas won that battle. He could have become proud.
Instead, he stopped writing. What happened, according to an early biographer, was this: While saying mass on this day, December 6, 1273, the noble-minded philosopher experienced a heavenly vision. Urged to take up his pen again, he replied, "Such things have been revealed to me that all that I have written seems to me as so much straw. Now I await the end of my life."