Lust and Spiritual Contemplation According to St. Thomas Aquinas | Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2020

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This talk was given at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. as part of the Thomistic Circles Conference "Aquinas on Contemplation: Philosophy, Theology, and the Spiritual Life" held on October 10, 2020.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us online: thomisticinstitute.org.

About the speaker:

Father Andrew Hofer, O.P., grew up as the youngest of ten children on a Kansas farm. He entered the Dominican Province of St. Joseph in 1995 and professed simple vows the following year. He made his profession of solemn vows in the Great Jubilee Year of 2000, and was ordained a deacon in 2001 and a priest in 2002.

His assignments have included serving as a parochial vicar in Rhode Island, a missionary in Kenya, a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame, a formator at the Dominican House of Studies, and a member of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception. He is finishing a book titled The Word in Our Flesh: A Return to Patristic Preaching, whose research the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship funded through its Teacher-Scholar Grant.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So, for the introduction, Rick van Neuhenhoff in 2017 in an article said that St.
0:08.8	Thomas Aquinas' understanding of contemplation was a sorely neglected topic in scholarship.
0:15.2	Okay, so Aquinas on contemplation has been sorely neglected.
0:20.3	Rick van Neuwenhov has written a few different articles
0:23.3	precisely on Aquinas on contemplation, and there are others who have been doing this recently,
0:28.4	but it is so wonderful for us here in the Temistic Institute to think about this neglected theme.
0:34.1	The theme is being addressed from different perspectives, and I have the honor of looking at it from a spiritual perspective,
0:39.3	what I'd like to do because the topic is so vast, and there are various mystic traditions on this,
0:45.3	is really to focus on pleasure.
0:48.3	Okay? So delight or pleasure.
0:51.3	Just ceaselessly, when St. Thomas talks about contemplation, he talks about
0:57.4	how wonderful it is, how pleasurable is, how delightful it is, however you want to translate
1:03.0	his Latin. And I thought a nice way of entering that would be looking at his proemium
1:09.0	in Boeith and his commentary on Boeethys' De Hebnobobabdi
1:12.8	Bois. So St. Thomas chooses a verse from the book of Siroc as Thama to be able to get into the
1:23.8	subject. Searok says, be first to run home to your house. Call out there and their play, Lude,
1:30.3	and muse upon your conceptions.
1:33.3	So St. Thomas takes this play seriously.
1:38.3	You know, it's serious play here.
1:41.3	And then for us to read in terms of what St. Thomas is thinking here.
1:48.0	St. Thomas says, the zeal for wisdom has the prerogative that by pursuing its task,
1:54.0	it is the more sufficient unto itself.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Thomistic Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Thomistic Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.