Spiritual Journey

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas
By Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem,
fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia, veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.¹

This is what Our Lord, coming among us, will teach us. He is Wisdom Incarnate; He is the Prophet; He is the Priest; He is the King; His divine soul is the temple housing all these riches.

Is there a cradle, or the birth of a child among men, over which has shone, in an incomparable fashion, all the splendors of God’s government in the world? Yes, it is the cradle and the birth of the Child who will soon appear as the way or the path for the return of man to God. (Summa theologica Ia. Q.119 a.2 ad 4um)

In 1945-47, having had to leave Africa by decision of the Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, where I had been since 1932, to take direction of the religious training college of philosophy for the French Province situated at Mortain, I was thus responsible for spiritual conferences.

To plan them, I relied on the treatment of virtues in the Summa Theologica, and I drafted a few notes which helped me to give these conferences.

The years have passed, my convictions on the subject of the treasure represented by the Summa Theologica, in conformity with the constant Magisterium of the Church, have only grown stronger.

Given that the Summa of St. Thomas represents the framework of knowledge of the Faith for each seminarian or priest who wishes, according to the desire of the Church, to enlighten his intelligence with the light of Revelation, and acquire accordingly divine wisdom, it seems to me supremely desirable that these priestly souls find in this Summa not only the light of the faith but also the source of sanctity, of a life of prayer and contemplation, of a total and unreserved offering of themselves to God by Our Lord Jesus Christ Crucified, thus preparing themselves and preparing the souls which are entrusted to them for a blessed life in the bosom of the Holy Trinity.

This ideal is without doubt much too pretentious for my capacities. I hope that, with the grace of God, priests of the Society more gifted than I undertake to put together a spiritual Summa from the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas.

But choosing some principal ideas from the Summa, I will try to focus attention on the immense spiritual richness that it contains, and especially on the spiritual security procured by these meditations based on an enlightened faith, and not on religious sentimentalism or on a subjectivist charismaticism.

May these modest meditations inspire a spiritual immutability, a sharing in the immutability of God!

1 "O Wisdom, Who hast come forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one extremity of the world to another, directing all things forcefully and mildly, come and teach us the way of prudence". (Antiphon at Magnificat, for December 17)

(To be continued)