You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast, 2020. It is also the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas. Now, this week we've been talking about saints as they celebrate their feast days each day.

Monday was the feast of St. Francis DeSales.

Tuesday, the feast of the conversion of St. Paul.

Wednesday, the feast of Timothy and Titus.

Two people involved in the early church, converted and baptized by St. Paul himself.

Yesterday was a feast day of St. Angela Marachi, who founded the very first teaching order,

sort of by accident.

And today is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 12th hundreds, and who has made such an impact on our church.

I know I will not be able to talk about it all today.

So here are some of the highlights from St. Thomas Aquinas' life.

First of all, he was born into a noble French family who had connections to the Benedictine community. Of course, Benedictans were founded by

St. Benedict. This is many hundred years after St. Benedict lived, and the order was a little bit

not as straight laces as they once were. They had a member of their family who was the abbot of the community.

They knew if Thomas went there, he could become abbot himself when he was too young to do that.

But St. Thomas was very devout, and he was attracted to the Dominicans, which were a much younger

order. And so eventually, after he was imprisoned in his family's castle for several

years, eventually his mother gave in. He went to the University of Paris where he studied under

another saint, whom we know as Saint Albert the Great. Albert was a genius in his own right, and he identified that

St. Thomas Aquinas was a genius as well. Now, the incredible thing about St. Thomas Aquinas is that,

yes, he was no doubt a genius. He wrote many works that are fundamental to our faith, including the Summa Theologica,

where he lays out the foundations of theology. But even beyond this, he was incredibly humble,

charitable, and devoted to prayer and to saying Holy Mass.

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