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Gospel: Mark 3:31-35
The mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house.
Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him.
A crowd seated around him told him,
“Your mother and your brothers and your sisters
are outside asking for you.”
But he said to them in reply,
“Who are my mother and my brothers?”
And looking around at those seated in the circle he said,
“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Perhaps the two most influential thinkers in the history of the Catholic Church are Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who lived 800 years apart.
Saint Augustine lived in northern Africa in the 4th century and is most famous for his memoir, Confessions, in which he documents his storied past, his dramatic conversion, and ultimately his conclusion that:
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.”
The Church has preserved these, and over five million other words either written or preached by Augustine, for nearly two-thousand years.
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Similarly, Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose feast day we celebrate today, was a prolific writer who built upon the writings of Augustine. Incredibly, Thomas wrote more than 100,000 pages of philosophy and theology. His depth and clarity of thought remain unmatched.
Yet, one day while celebrating Mass, Thomas received a vision of heaven that affected him so deeply he never wrote another word.
“The end of my labors has come,” he said. “All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”
Three months later, Thomas died peacefully.
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So, what can the life and example of these towering Saints say to us today?
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First, make every effort to be counted as a brother or sister of Jesus Christ, as the Lord calls for in today’s Gospel. You will remain restless – unsatisfied in life – until you do.
Secondly, remember that there is no sacrifice we can make that outweighs the reward to come. Even the compendium of Thomas Aquinas – 100,000 pages of the best writing the Church has ever known – is, in his words, straw compared to the beauty of God.
So, how might I grow with the Lord today?
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Image credits: (1) Pantocrator, Sinai (2) Augustine versus Aquinas, The Gospel Coalition (3) Sunday Social