There’s a multitude of Lenten meditation books but only one that’s packed with the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas. Journey through Lent with the Church’s greatest philosopher-theologian. This unrivaled spiritual master will guide you in encountering Our Lord and experiencing the type of fruitful Lent that he often experienced. You will relish this magnificent treasury of sixty-three of Aquinas’s Scripture-based sermons specially selected for the holy season. From Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, you’ll learn how to deepen your prayer life, conquer temptation, resist the evils incurred by sin, and equip yourself for spiritual battle. In the straightforward, logical language for which he is famous, Aquinas shows you how to detach yourself from the things of this world and refocus on the things above, reflecting on Our Lord and Our Lady as models. You will learn the importance of fasting to the preservation of chastity and how to perform acts that will increase your humility and purity. As you contemplate the example of Our Lord on the Cross, Aquinas will help you weed out vices and cultivate virtues to prepare for the joys of Heaven. Let the Angelic Doctor assist you in overcoming idleness and fostering a deeper devotion with stirring reflections Ways in which the Blood of Jesus is precious and salvificThe confidence we should place in Our Divine Friend, even in sickness, suffering, and painHow Our Lady suffered and how she personifies charity, patience, humility, obedience, and detachment Why the pain suffered by Our Lord was the greatest pain possible in this life Jesus’ fourfold humiliation on the Cross—and the fourfold exaltation it merited HimHow Christ manifested all virtues on the Cross, the “pulpit from which He taught all mankind”Also included are forgotten or little-known traditional feast days, such as the feast of the Holy Lance and the Nails of Our Lord and the feast of the Holy Winding Sheet. You will find rich meditations on Christ’s Passion and reflections for each day of Holy Week. Best of all, you will discover the greatest love story of all the Father who offered His only Son, and the Son who underwent every suffering and sacrificed His life for our redemption.
Author
Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar and theologian of Italy and the most influential thinker of the medieval period, combined doctrine of Aristotle and elements of Neoplatonism, a system that Plotinus and his successors developed and based on that of Plato, within a context of Christian thought; his works include the Summa contra gentiles (1259-1264) and the Summa theologiae or theologica (1266-1273). Saint Albertus Magnus taught Saint Thomas Aquinas. People ably note this priest, sometimes styled of Aquin or Aquino, as a scholastic. The Roman Catholic tradition honors him as a "doctor of the Church." Aquinas lived at a critical juncture of western culture when the arrival of the Aristotelian corpus in Latin translation reopened the question of the relation between faith and reason, calling into question the modus vivendi that obtained for centuries. This crisis flared just as people founded universities. Thomas after early studies at Montecassino moved to the University of Naples, where he met members of the new Dominican order. At Naples too, Thomas first extended contact with the new learning. He joined the Dominican order and then went north to study with Albertus Magnus, author of a paraphrase of the Aristotelian corpus. Thomas completed his studies at the University of Paris, formed out the monastic schools on the left bank and the cathedral school at Notre Dame. In two stints as a regent master, Thomas defended the mendicant orders and of greater historical importance countered both the interpretations of Averroës of Aristotle and the Franciscan tendency to reject Greek philosophy. The result, a new modus vivendi between faith and philosophy, survived until the rise of the new physics. The Catholic Church over the centuries regularly and consistently reaffirmed the central importance of work of Thomas for understanding its teachings concerning the Christian revelation, and his close textual commentaries on Aristotle represent a cultural resource, now receiving increased recognition.
