Thomas Aquinas was a Dominican friar, philosopher, Catholic priest, Doctor of the Church, and a premodern citizen in the 13th century. Here scholar, theologian, and teacher, Father Matthew Fox explores the writings and wisdom of this electrifying saint and speaks of Aquinas’ timeless wisdom to a postmodern world. Fox encourages all spiritual warriors and activists to grow our vision and our courage. He speaks of some of the positive things that the coronavirus has brought to us as we shelter in place, “I think there are tremendous lessons to learn: we need a new economics, new politics, a new attitude to our religion and spirituality, to art, and media, if we’re going to survive on this planet. I’m hoping that this crisis we’re in now will wake us up to the fact that all of us are going to have to sacrifice and shift our lifestyles to be more in tune with what Mother Earth requires. It’s that simple.” Fox also shares the philosophy of Aquinas, who often wrote about the profound virtue of joy, “Why does the universe exist at all? [Aquinas’] answer is for the sake of joy, for the Divine and for our own. When we’re joyful, we want to celebrate and share it with others. And that’s his thesis, that divinity itself wanted to share the joy of divinity and that’s why the rest of us exist, to share it with one another… And in these difficult and hard times of the coronavirus we have to hang on to the goodness of creation, the joy of existence in order to see us through and not yield to despair or to self pity, neither of which helps”.
