St. Thomas Aquinas -- again

Pange, lingua, gloriosi corporis mysterium.

Editing a manuscript on early and medieval theologians the other day, and using the Internet to check some facts, I happened upon some "interesting" claims about why St. Thomas is called the Angelic Doctor.
  A few self-proclaimed "authorities" said that it was because he wrote so much about angels, you know, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Some others recounted the story about how, when one of his brothers brought in a prostitute to tempt him to give up the idea of joining the Dominicans, Thomas chased her out of the room with a burning torch--and then they go on to add that angels visited Thomas to reveal to him that he had been granted the gift of perfect chastity and would never have to struggle with sexual desires.
  I'll spare you my rant about being very careful what you trust on the Internet; we all know that. But Thomas is one of my favorite saints (he's a Dominican, after all) and it appalls me to see this rubbish being propagated about him.
  First we have one of the greatest intellects that ever lived, who wrote not only theological treatises but also some of the most stunning poetry in the Christian tradition, being reduced to some New Age claim that he wrote chiefly about angels--and irrelevant nonsense at that.
  The well-known story about the prostitute may or may not be apocryphal; in any case, if I were making a film about Thomas's life I'd certainly include it, it's great drama. But the pious postscript about the gift of perfect chastity--What good does it do us to believe such a legend? What kind of a role model can such a person be? How do we honor Thomas (or any saint) by lifting him out of the realm of normal human struggles--and victories?
  Thomas was a Mensch.  Not for nothing was he a Dominican when there were so many other choices available. When I taught medieval Christianity to seminary students I had a segment called "What Made Thomas Tick," and I wrote on the board the words from Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne" (in the verse about Jesus), "Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone."  Then I said, "This was not Thomas."
  No, it took others after Thomas to develop virtual caricatures of his theological method. As much as I dearly love Gerard Manley Hopkins, I somehow can't blame the Jesuits for being annoyed that, as theologians went, he favored Scotus over Aquinas.
  Well, March 7 is the anniversary of Thomas's death and thus should properly be his feast. But his feast was moved to January 28.  I doubt if Father Dominic and Jordan of Saxony and especially his teacher Albert the Great would mind if we celebrated the Angelic Doctor--so called because his intellect was so astounding that it seemed as if only a superhuman being could possess it--twice.

A Garden Bursting into Life: Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

One thing I love about Mary Magdalene is that she dared to be exactly who she was: a generous, passionate, devoted and grateful person. Mary Magdalene was never, ever a cardboard copy of who she "thought" she should be. She acted out of her core, never out of a list of "shoulds" or "musts." 
    One of my favorite songs is "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol, and the line that always jumps out at me, loaded with layers of meaning, is "Show me a garden that's bursting into life." I dare say, that's Mary Magdalene's theme. Look at the Easter story in the Gospel of John, which we read on her feast. She goes to the tomb expecting to see a dead body to anoint with spices, and what does she find instead?  "A garden that's bursting into life"! And the person in charge is the Ultimate Gardener, Jesus. What a great and wonderful surprise, a gift from the God of the Unexpected.  Who was better able fully and completely to embrace this surprise and all it implied than Mary Magdalene, the "apostle to the apostles"?
    Happy feast day, St. Mary Madgalene.  Happy feast day to my friends among the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and the Paulist Fathers, both of which hold Mary Magdalene in special regard as a patron saint.