The boy who chewed up books..

Once upon a time….

There was a boy called Thomas. His father, Landulph, was a count, and they lived in a castle near a town called Aquino. Thomas had eight brothers and sisters, and he was the youngest.

One day when he was a baby they found him chewing a page he had pulled out of a book. Books were very valuable at the time, and so his mother was a bit cross and worried. She was even more worried when she found the page he had got hold of was out of the bible, and the bit Thomas was enjoying chewing had the word ‘God’ written on it. But his father just laughed ‘Just shows he’ll make a fine monk’ he said – for his plan for Thomas was that he would be a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Monte Cassino, where Thomas’ uncle was Abbot. His father hoped Thomas would end up being Abbot. For now though they had to keep him from chomping on books!

When Thomas got a little older he became a maddening toddler: You know the sort – he wanted to know everything, and there was no end to his questions, and his questions were impossible: ‘Why is there a God?’ ‘What is God?’ ‘Who made God?’ ‘How does the bread become Jesus?’ His mother was driven half mad, but his father still laughed: ‘He’ll make a fine monk’ he said.

When he was five Thomas was sent off to the monastery. There were a lot of other boys there, so he was not too lonely, but he missed his mother a lot and used to cry quietly at night.

What Thomas enjoyed a lot, though, was that the monks were happy to let him at the books – which his family had not been too keen on since the book-eating episode – and he quickly learned to read. He learned that his questions were not new. Lots of great saints had asked the same questions, and had given good answers, but it seemed to him that there was more to ask, and more to say. Also he found the way that they answered questions annoying. They seemed to go round and round and repeat themselves a lot, and not answer in an orderly way that was easy to understand. Thomas begged some odd scraps of parchmen and began to plan out how he would answer the questions himself.

There Thomas might have stayed, puzzling the monks with his questions and trying to work out answers, but there was a war. Thomas’ mother, who was anxious about him, because she really loved him, sent to have him brought home. She was afraid that the monastery would get mixed up in the war, and felt he would be safer at home. At first Thomas was happy – he loved his family and he had missed them very much. However he found his brothers were interested in different things than he was: they liked hunting and horses and girls. Thomas was a tall strongly built boy, but he was a bit fat, and not much good on horseback. He wantedto be a monk, and he loved Jesus more than any girl, and though he liked wine well enough, he did not like to get drunk as his brothers seemed to. And there were only about three books in the castle, one of which seemed to have been chewed upon…

‘Mama, I must do something… more….’ He found the words did not come, but his dear mother understood. She went to her husband. ‘Why don’t we send Thomas to the University in Naples?’ Her husband grumbled a bit, but the monks had said Thomas had a rare intellect, and should study moore, so he agreed.

So off Thomas went, wildly excited, to the university. On his first day in the university the lecturer arrived. He was wearing a gleaming white habit. ‘Who’s that?’ whispered Thomas ‘Its Master John. He’s a bit dangerous – he’s into the pagan philiosophers.’ ‘But what is that white habit?’ ‘Oh, he’s a Dominican’

Thomas liked learning from Master John. He liked the white habit he wore. He liked learning about what the pagan and Jewish thinkers were saying, and where they were right and where they were wrong – and here finally he met a mind that could begin to answer his many questions. He listened, he read a lot, and he learned. As I said, Thomas ran to fat, and he had a round sleepy looking face, though his eyes were very alert. The other students soon had a name for him – ‘The dumb ox’ – because somehow Thomas had stopped asking questions out loud, and he never put up his hand in class. One student, a bit kinder than the rest, saw Thomas looking puzzled one day during a lecture on how the bread at Mass becomes Jesus. (the word for this is ‘transubstantiation’) He followed Thomas after the class: ‘Having trouble?’ He asked, hoping Thomas would ask him a nice simple question.

‘Well, a bit.’ Said Thomas ‘How is it that Jesus is substantially present in every place where the Eucharist is, all at the same time? If a mouse chews the host, does it receive Jesus? If the Host is Jesus, when does it stop being Jesus?’ The young student’s mouth flopped open with dismay, but when he tried to answer the questions, every answer Thomas gave was better than his.

Thomas soon decided he liked the new order better than the Benedictines, and wrote to his parents to explain that he had join the new order. He was nineteen years old. Thomas’ parents were furious. They wrote at once, ordering him to return home. The Dominicans were alarmed. Even though he was so young, they already realised Thomas was something special, and they did not want to lose him. They sent him off to travel to Paris viaRome, to escape his parent’s influence. However as they travelled some horsemen rode up, pushed a bag over Thomas’ head and flung him over the saddle of an extra horse. Thomas was a prisoner!

When finally the bag was removed, he found he was at home, in his own room. The only difference was that when he ran to the door, it was locked.

For the next two years his family did everything they could to dissuade him from being a Dominican – they even tried putting a girl in his room, but Thomas chased her out with a burning log from his fire. After this some angels came to him and told him he would be pure in heart for the rest of his life. Eventually his Dominican brothers managed to send him a habit to wear, and his family gave up trying to stop him praying – in fact his sister joined in with him in his prayers, and eventually told her father she wanted to become a nun.

One day his mother came to him and said ‘Thomas, if nothing will change your mind, I will help you escape – I cannot persuade your father, so it has to be this way.’ She and her daughters put Thomas in a huge basket and lowered him out of the castle window. The Dominicans received him back with joy.

Thomas went on to be the greatest teacher the Church had ever known. Every Catholic priest is supposed to read what Thomas wrote, and he is a canonised saint of the Church. As his great teacher, St Albert the Great said to his fellow students when they mocked him, "You call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world." He was also the kindest and humblest of the friars – if someone needed a companion to go into town with he would always go with them, even if he was really busy. Once a visitor saw this large friar lumbering about and thought he must be some kind of Lay brother – the ones who do all the work. He ordered Thomas about, telling him to carry his bag and bring him refreshment. He then asked to see the great teacher. He was astonished when the great teacher turned out to be the large friar he had been ordering about.

Towards the end of his life, Thomas was working on his most famous book, the Summa Theologiae (which was the orderly book about everything the Church teaches and why). He had just finished writing about the Blessed Sacrament, and he was praying in the chapel. Jesus appeared to him and said ‘You have written well of me Thomas. What reward would you have for your labour? Thomas replied ‘Nothing but you Lord’. After that he wrote very little, and when they asked him why he said ‘Everything I have written seems like a little straw compared with the things I have seen.’ He meant not that his writing was no good, but that the good things of heaven were so much better by comparison, that he could not write much more about anything else.

Soon afterwards Thomas died, and fifty years after his death he was declared a saint.