January 31st, 2026

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St. Thomas Aquinas was a great mentor as I moved towards coming into
full communion with the Catholic Church / So I took Thomas as my
Confirmation name. Wednesday January 28 was the Feast Day for St.
Thomas Aquinas, which was a big day for me.

-St. Thomas Aquinas was known as the “Angelic Doctor” / He was widely
regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in world history – not only
revered as a Saint by Catholics, but also respected as a thinker by all /
Thomas was also a Scientist and Theologian.

-Many thinkers and theologians in Thomas’ time and earlier were known to
be thinkers with a deep spirituality / They fed off each other.

-In Modernity there have been times where we separated the two / A person
was EITHER a great Theologian and Thinker, or a person was deeply
spiritual and a mystic / We did not always expect or put both together.

-St. Thomas was not only wickedly smart and wise / He was very spiritual
and devout / He wrote and articulated very well the Catholic Faith and the
things of God / Thomas used reason through the lens of Faith / And as a
philosopher asked the deeper questions about reality and the purpose of
human existence / His Summa Theologiae used questions to uncover
deeper truths about God, Faith, and Human Existence.

-Like St. Thomas Aquinas we need both reason and the spiritual (Faith) to
understand the fullness of truth of self, and reality that surrounds us / And
we need to use reason that is informed by our Faith and not the opposite.

-Why do we continue to try to separate reason from the spiritual / We are
both physical (material) and spiritual / The spiritual (Faith) gives meaning
to the physical (material) / As a Catholic School this understanding is
included in our Classical Catholic Education at Infant of Prague.

-With that said: Wisdom is know we cannot define self (the material)
without the Spiritual / We need Jesus to show us the truth of our reality of
being / To use Reason properly through the lens of Jesus and our Catholic
Faith so we are not obscuring reality of self or our surroundings.

-I will use this as an example of using reason through the lens of Faith to
properly come to know truth of self, and the reality that surrounds us.

-Both Zechariah (Fr. of John the Baptist) and Mary at the Annunciation were
visited by an Angel / God let them know that Elizabeth (Zechariah’s wife),

and Mary herself would be with child / How they responded with a question
is telling / Both were not sure how this could come to be in their present
circumstances.

-Zechariah asked: How can I know?
-Mary asked: How can this be?

-Zechariah is focused on self knowledge via his own reason / How can “I”
know / While Mary is on depending on God, the author of reality and
reason, to show how this will truly come to be / Her reason was to be
informed through the lens of Faith to understand her circumstances and
reality.

Mary is seeking to know reality through its author - God / Unlike Zechariah,
Mary is not placing the object of being within her own self-perceptions and
reason, but seeking the truth from and through God, the author of reality
and reason.

-When we connect our interior reason, and perceptions to God’s Natural
Law and the Universal Truths found outside ourselves (Faith) / We begin to
really know who we are and where we are going (Truth & Reality).

Thank you St. Thomas Aquinas

Vivat Jesus,
Father Vic Gournas