Fr. Gregory Pine

Thomas Aquinas is one of these saints who had his life and works kind of subjected to thorough scrutiny as part of like a modern canonization process.

The modern canonization process is kind of coming online in the centuries before him, but it's really, it's cruising, it's really doing what it ought to do by the time that

He is up for canonization.

And so you'll hear that story recounted, I think in the biography written in association with that process by William of Tocco.

So it was like St.

Thomas was in the priory in Naples at the end of his life.

He was assigned there from like 1272 to 1274 for his last stint.

And he used to celebrate mass and then he would serve mass for his like main scribe, Reginald Piperno.

And he would also spend a lot of time in Thanksgiving and he would weep copiously.

And it was the sacristan of that priory church whose name is like Domenico, I've forgotten his last name.

And he was passing by and he heard in clear tones an exchange between St.

Thomas Aquinas and the crucified Lord.

And like, that's the main story.

Like he heard, well, you have written of me, Thomas, what would you have in return?

And St.

Thomas is said to have responded, nothing but thyself, O Lord, nothing but thyself.

So I think it's good to keep that in mind that our Lord thought that he wrote well, because shortly thereafter, kind of in association with that mystical experience and also the exhaustion of his life's work, St.

Thomas pronounced upon his works that they were so much straw by comparison to what he had seen.

So it's not to say that they're straw, because if they were straw, he would burn them.

They're straw by comparison to what he saw, and he saw the Lord.