Pints With Aquinas - A Meditation for Lent by St. Thomas Aquinas

Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day guys, this coming Wednesday begins the start of Lent, in the Western Church at least. We've begun it here already in the East because we have to try to outdo everybody. But anyway, Ash Wednesday is this Wednesday, Lent begins. Hopefully you have a plan on how to crush this Lent. Now if you don't, don't feel bad. Me and Father Gregory Pyne are going to be talking about how to have a great Lent. But I wanted to suggest something to you that could really benefit your Lent. Thomas Aquinas wrote daily meditations for Lent. These are not meditations that somebody else has

Starting point is 00:00:36 cobbled together from his works on Christ and suffering and things like this. Rather, these are meditations he wrote specifically for you and me to read throughout Lent. Now, you can buy this book online. I'd recommend that you do. But if you become a patron at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd, in addition to getting a heap of other things that we give you, like a signed copy of my brand new book on Marian consecration that I wrote with Father Gregory Pine, Pines with Aquinas stickers, all sorts of things. In addition to all of that, you also get access to these daily meditations. So what that looks like is you would open up your Patreon app and you would click play and you would listen to a three to a five or a six minute meditation from Thomas Aquinas. I've recorded them professionally.

Starting point is 00:01:22 They have chant in the background. I'm going to play it for you in a moment. I've recorded them professionally. They have chant in the background. I'm going to play it for you in a moment. And that could be a beautiful way to, I don't know, to kind of anchor yourself this land. If you're like me, in the past, I've made these big, grandiose resolutions, and sometimes I haven't stuck to them. And I'm not saying that that should deter you from making strong and serious and even grandiose resolutions, but it can also be helpful to do these small things, to choose to do these small things. So let me play for you this very first meditation. Give it a listen. If you like it, and this is something you'd like to do throughout Lent, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash mattfrad, start supporting me for 10 bucks or more a month. And that will, first of all, that's huge because that helps us do all the work that we're doing here with Pines with Aquinas, paying all the people that work here for us. Also, it'll help me travel to Africa, which I'm doing this coming summer, bringing resources down for everybody.

Starting point is 00:02:14 So it helps us, and I think it would be a blessing to you as well. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Here is Aquinas' meditation for Ash Wednesday. So you can hear it a couple of days in advance. And if you become a patron, you can listen to it again on Wednesday. Here it is. Meditations for Lent from St. Thomas Aquinas. Ash Wednesday, death. By one man, sin entered into this world, and by sin death. If for some wrongdoing a man is deprived of some benefit once given to him,

Starting point is 00:02:52 that he should lack that benefit is the punishment of his sin. Now in man's first creation he was divinely endowed with this advantage that, so long as his mind remained subject to God, the lower powers of his soul were subjected to the reason and the body was subjected to the soul. But because by sin, man's mind moved away from its subjection to God, it followed that the lower parts of his mind ceased to be wholly subjected to the reason. From this there followed such a rebellion of the bodily inclination against the reason that the body was no longer wholly subject to the soul. Whence followed death and all bodily defects.

Starting point is 00:03:34 For life and wholeness of body are bound up with this, that the body is wholly subject to the soul, as a thing which can be made perfect is subject to that which makes it perfect. So it comes about that conversely there are such things as death, sickness, and every other bodily defect. For such misfortunes are bound up with an incomplete subjection of body to soul. The rational soul is of its nature immortal, and therefore death is not natural to man insofar as man has a soul. It is natural to his body, for the body, since it is formed of things contrary to each other in nature, is necessarily liable to corruption, and it is in this respect that death is natural to man. But God who fashioned man is all-powerful, and hence by an advantage conferred on the first man, he took away that necessity of dying which was bound up with the matter of which man was made.

Starting point is 00:04:41 This advantage was, however, withdrawn through the sin of our first parents. Death is then natural, if we consider the matter of which man is made, and it is a penalty in as much as it happens through the loss of the privilege whereby man was preserved from dying. Sin, original sin and actual sin, is taken away by Christ, that is to say, by Him who is also the remover of all bodily defects. He shall quicken also your mortal bodies because of His Spirit that dwelleth in you. But, according to the order appointed by a wisdom that is divine, it is at the time which best suits that Christ takes away both the one and the other, that is, both sin and bodily defects. Now, it is only right that, before we arrive at the glory of impassibility and immortality which began in Christ and which was acquired for us through Christ, we should be shaped after the pattern of Christ's sufferings. It is then only right that Christ's liability to suffer should remain in us too for a time, as a means of our coming to the impassibility of glory in the way He himself came to it.

Pints With Aquinas - A Meditation for Lent by St. Thomas Aquinas

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