Thomas Aquinas: Champion of Creativity

This ox of a man - stubborn, slow, and absent minded (he solved at least one difficult problem at the dinner table) - never wavered in his fidelity to Mother Church. He humbly professed that he was Her servant, that everything he wrote was as nothing (straw) compared to the true glory of God, and that all that he learned found its source before the Crucified Lord, that is, in prayer. His love for the Eucharist cannot be doubted. It is to his creative brilliance that we owe the word "transubstantiation," Panis Angelicus, Tantum Ergo, Pange Lingua, and O Salutaris, among others.

Recently, I was reminded that to be truly creative you must be prayerful. Of course, we are not talking about a creativity that sends your imagination into the realms of the impossible - "creating" nothing but daydreams and pop appeal. I'm talking about that creativity that shares in the transmission of the Word in the world, true creativity that renders us instruments of God's all creative love. It is this creativity that every great evangelizer must possess, and so every great evangelizer (to which we are all called) must encounter the Creator in prayer - consistently and constantly. 

In prayer our thoughts gain clarity and our expression is one with our thoughts. In prayer "we come up" with ideas and receive the strength to carry them out according to His will. In prayer we are united to God, and thus what we do and who we are become always more consistent and authentic. His Image cannot be buried in a prayerful soul, it bursts forth in all the creative ingenuity of a soul in love with God.... the expression of the Creator himself.

When I think of the most creative people, I think of saints. Against all odds they created masterpieces - musical, literary, theatrical, athletic, entrepreneurial, diplomatic, etc., because they thought "outside the box" - having minds and hearts in that of God. St. Thomas Aquinas is one of these champions of creativity.

He was so simple and unassuming that he was goaded by his young peers and nick-named the dumb-ox. His presumed naivete blossomed into truly innocent purity, when as a young man (imprisoned by his own family for wanting to enter the Dominicans!) he frightened a temptress away with a hot rod. An angel appeared to him and girded the young man with a spiritual cincture. Upon his death, his confessor said that it was the confession of a five-year old boy.

Had St. Thomas not protected his purity and found refuge in the Eucharist, he would not have stayed the straight and narrow. Perhaps he would not have had the insight and courage to tackle Aristotle and his commentators, to address contemporary Church politics with candor and charity, St. Thomas, without the contemplative life may have been a theologian and a philosopher, but he would not have been a Saint, nor a Doctor of the Church, and certainly not the Angelic Doctor we so admire.