st. thomas aquinas - reason and faith are necessary

One day St. Thomas Aquinas a student just like you was caught sleeping while his teacher a friar was giving a lecture.  The friar upon seeing him asleep suddenly shouted pointing towards the window, there’s an elephant flying.  Thomas suddenly woke up and in excitement run to the window to see the flying elephant pass by.  His classmates and the friar laughed saying – only a dumb fool would believe that an elephant can fly.  St. Thomas terrible slighted and embarrassed looked at his teacher and said, “It is easier to believe that an elephant can fly, than to believe that a friar can tell a lie.”

Today in this feast of St. Thomas Aquinas I would like to reflect with you about his first love and the only thing that mattered to him most in his life - the truth.  That was all that mattered for him.  His lifetime mission he said was to seek the truth in charity.  He studied it, labored for it and sought it.  He was not afraid that he was peering into pagan philosophy and using its methods to come to the truth of Christianity.  For Thomas we can use science and the rational methods of science to come to the truth about God.  It is not as if a doctor, or a scientist, or a physicist who studied quantum mechanics cannot believe in God.  It is not as if religion is only for the uneducated masses, that religion is only for the superstitious and the gullible.  And since one is educated in prestigious institutions and universities known for its learning, one abandons his or her belief in God.  For Thomas Aquinas the intellect can come to know God.  It is not just through faith that we can come to know God but also and above all through reason.  There are many intellectual giants who never made it a reason to abandon faith, to abandon the teachings of the church just because they are steeped in learning.  There are intellectuals who despite their career and professions remain simple in their faith, clutching and praying their rosaries, lighting candles to the saints.  It is indeed sad that when we have reached the pinnacle of intellectual learning we abandon God, the giver of wisdom and knowledge, and relegate belief in him to the less educated.

Science and Religion are complementary, they complete each other.  Reason and Faith are necessary for they complete each other.  I believe this is what Jesus is trying to make us see in our gospel today when he defined relationships, when he defined and gave a new meaning to the word family.

What is family, what is it that makes us a family with Jesus. Jesus said, he who does the will of my Father is brother and sister and mother to me.  The danger when science abandons religion is precisely this – it cannot define and therefore see the human person beyond atomic structures, beyond flesh and blood, beyond a special and intelligent animal, beyond a thing.  Science alone cannot go beyond the big bang and see the origin of man as coming from the hand of God, and it cannot see man’s destiny beyond the hopelessness of death.  Diin ka halin – sa egg kag sa sperm sang akon ginikanan.  Diin ka pakadto – sa amon family mausoleum, sa lulubngan.  Tam-an ka kitid nga panan-aw, indi bala?

This is what Jesus is teaching us in the gospel.  Science may define us as related, as a family by the genes we pass around.  Religion goes beyond that for it can define us as brothers and sisters in a common Father.  Science defines us as atoms, quarks and neurons but only religion can define us as children and persons.  My point is science and religion are not opposed.  Rather they complete each other.  And that is what Thomas Aquinas stood for.