At the end of his life, St. Thomas Aquinas had what some believe was a beatific vision and stopped short of completing his work entitled the Summa Theoligiae.

“The end of my labors is come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”

St. Thomas Aquinas

Consider the verses from 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilledmaster builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Arguably one of the world’s most brilliant minds, a theologian and a philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas made it his life’s work to try to prove the existence of God and make the case for Christ. Why then would he say that his life’s work was straw? If we are to take the words of the Apostle Paul seriously then we may conclude that the work of the Summa Theologiae was of St. Thomas’ own hands. He saw it clearly as a work of the flesh and not the Spirit. He knew his words would not survive the fire of purification.

The wisdom of God is foolishness to this world and the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. There is only so far a person can go on the logic and reason of the human mind. We must see the spiritual with spiritual eyes and put on the mind of Christ. Our own human understanding cannot comprehend the light that the Word provides.

Though St. Thomas Aquinas considered his work straw, the Catholic church went on to use his last work in the at the council of Trent during the counter-reformation. I wonder what the church would have become if they had not adopted a worldy interpretation of Scripture. Maybe one day soon, we’ll see what the Church can be when she submits to and walks in the Spirit.