He was the Angelic Doctor of the Church, a member of the Dominican Order, admired for the brilliance of his mind in writing such great works as the Summa Theologica, but loved for the warmth and devotion his heart had for the Blessed Sacrament. Saint Thomas said, “I found more wisdom in prayer at the feet of the Crucified than in all the books I ever read.” When Saint Thomas Aquinas was thirty-nine years old, at the request of Pope Urban IV, he wrote the Mass and the Office for the feast of Corpus Christi. This was in the year 1264. The Catholic hymns, Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris, and the Panis Angelicus and Adoro Te Devote, Latens Deitas, and the beautiful sequence in his Mass of Corpus Christi, known as the Lauda Sion Salvatorem, are all the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Every time a Catholic priest gives Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, he chants a prayer of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the choir sings a hymn he composed. Saint Thomas died when he was only forty-nine years old, on his way to the Second Council of Lyons. Although a Dominican, he died in a Benedictine monastery, of Fossa-Nuova, and the monks of this monastery thought his death there one of the greatest honors their house had ever been given.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Protector of the University of Cusco, Cuzco School (credits/details)
