Today is the feast of St Thomas Aquinas.

When you are confirmed in the Church, you choose a name for yourself, the name of a saint whose path in life impresses you in some way. This saint, then, becomes part of your life after confirmation. People often turn to their patron saints, asking their intercession in various situations. Or they reflect on the lives of their patron saints and consider how their example might be applicable in their own search for holiness.

A few years back, when I was about to be confirmed in the Catholic Church, I had to decide upon a patron saint. In my big, empty condo I sat up in bed, paging through a massive binder full of pages which described hundreds of saints.

I pondered saint after saint, trying to find one with whom I especially identified. Then I came across Saint Thomas Aquinas. At the time, I'm not sure I'd ever heard of St Thomas. The description I had before me made him sound like quite an intelligent philosopher, someone who could express the faith in a logical, rational way. That impressed me, but not wanting to miss a "better" saint I proceeded to page through the rest. It took hours. But after a while, I came back to St Thomas. Something about him was attractive, so I chose him as my patron saint. Just call me "Jason Robert Thomas Signalness."

As I've studied since that time, I have come to realize what a giant Saint Thomas is in Catholic theology. He defended the faith and explained it with unmatched clarity and fullness. He lived in the 1200s, but if you look in his works, you will find answers to so many of today's "contemporary" religious problems. The man was a genius, no doubt.

Perhaps the most often repeated story about Saint Thomas explains why several of his main works were left unfinished. On the feast of St Nicholas in 1273, St Thomas went to resume his work after Mass. He abruptly stopped writing in the middle of work on the Sacrament of Penance. When a friend asked him why he had stopped writing, he answered "I can write no more. All that I have hitherto written seems to me nothing but straw." Later on he revealed, when questioned again about his work, that he had been granted some kind of private revelation by God. He said, again, "All that I have written seems to me nothing but straw ... compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me."

One of the greatest minds, a man who described the divine in a more thorough way than perhaps anyone before, was silenced by his inability to the express the reality of the supernatural. He died not long after, on his way to the Council at Lyon.

I first thought of St Thomas as an unmatched philosopher whose faith was constructed out of logic and reason, as if his belief in God were the capstone of some monumental intellectual exercise. Only later did I realize how much more complex the reality is. St Thomas stood on the shoulders of giants: Aristotle, St Paul, and countless others. He was first and foremost a man of faith. Secondarily, he was a philosopher who used his skills to defend and explain the faith that was the basis for his entire life.

This was a major conversion in my life. I went from a wanna-be philosopher (with a computer-science, need-to-understand-how-it-works brain) to a man who uses his puny mind to express his faith in a loving God whom he does not fully understand. I learned that reason can take us a long way, that faith can take us farther if we let it, and that the two can never truly disagree. Saint Thomas was my constant companion during this conversion, a conversion that was necessary for me to remain both a believer and a seminarian.

Saint Thomas, Thank you. Pray for us!

Many people I speak with seem lukewarm and uneducated with regard to their Christian faith. They're seeking something to give more meaning to life, or they're seeking something to fill a vague, misunderstood gap in their life. Being a Christian, I mean really striving to be a Christian, is the answer.

"When a soul has understood the greatness of that life, when it has grasped that the wellspring of it is to be found in union with Christ through faith and charity, it aspires to the perfection of that union; it seeks the fullness of the life that it should, in accordance with the thought of God, possess within itself. That union--might it be just a dream, the soul asks itself? No, it is not a dream; it can-it should-become a reality, sublime as that may be."

"What seems impossible to men is easy for God: 'With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'"

-Blessed Columba Marmion

Blessed Columba Marmion, Christ, the Life of the Soul, trans. Alan Bancroft (Bethesda, MD: Zaccheus Press, 2005).

There are two interesting things worth blogging about today.

First, there is this little video:

It is nice and warm in St Louis and I had time for a short bike ride. This might not be that interesting to people who live down here, but back home in North Dakota we don't see barges or bikers wearing shorts in January

Secondly, there is this, more serious, video:

Today is the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in our country. It's also, as a result, the day that 250,000 or so people march on Washington every year to oppose abortion. Half of the seminary has departed by bus to participate in the march. The funny thing is, I haven't seen a thing about the march on mainstream media news sites. You'd think a quarter million people staging a protest would generate at least a tiny bit of media attention. The only news story I found was one pointing out that there is, in fact, an absence of coverage of this event!

Please pray for the pro-life cause today and those who traveled across the country to show their support today.

We seminarians are again gathered back at Kenrick Seminary in St Louis, about to start another semester. Before each spring semester begins, seminarians all go on five-day silent (no talking) retreats. This year my class went to the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, which is near Belleville, Illinois. We stayed in the nice hotel on the grounds, had a private chapel set up in one of the conference rooms, and we were given conferences by Bishop Sample from the Diocese of Marquette, Michigan. The talks were excellent and the retreat was overall quite good. I did get sick for a few days of the retreat, but it was still a good experience.

The Shrine is a strange place. There is a very nice conference center, restaurant, and hotel that are all quite busy. The rest of the 200 or so acres is taken up by various "devotional areas," such as Stations of the Cross, a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a "Resurrection Garden," and so on. Apparently there is even a retirement community.

But by far the most interesting structure is the "Main Shrine." It was constructed in 1960 or 61 as a massive outdoor worship amphitheater. There is a tabernacle, altar, and so on out front for the celebration of outdoor Mass. Towering over the whole thing is a huge tripod that resembles an "M" (for Mary) no matter what direction you are viewing from. Here, see what I mean:

Behind the front sanctuary and altar, inside the structure, there is an indoor area called the "Mary Chapel," which is just wild:

And behind the main altar of the Shrine, down below, there is a series of "Rosary Courts" in which each of the Rosary mysteries (except the Luminous Mysteries, which had not been established in the 1960s) is depicted in a very nice mosaic. The Sorrowful Mysteries are enclosed in the nicest chapel on the property, in my opinion, though I didn't get a very nice picture of it:

Walking around the shrine was almost surreal at times. It was like, as one classmate put it, wandering around some abandoned city (on another planet, I might add). The place was mostly empty, but fully operational. The heat and lights were on, so it was pleasing to walk into the small, empty chapels to pray in solitude. There are door and passageways leading to different areas. To get the layout down, some exploring was required.

All that exploring was fun, but I saw a few things that made me suspicious. Shhh ... Personally, I think the "Shrine" is a massive cover operation for some large, underground, top-secret facility. I came to this theory while walking (not praying at that time, mind you) somewhere around station 12 or 13 of the Stations of the Cross. In that area there is a curiously unmarked doorway in the side of the hill. As I walked toward it to investigate, a Shrine "Security" vehicle drove by. Strange, I thought. And, to me, the giant tripod atop the Shrine, combined with the enormous outdoor amphitheater, seems as if it would function well as a giant antenna of some kind.

I know you are either thinking 1) You're crazy or 2) Weren't you supposed to be praying? I probably am crazy and, don't worry, I had a lot of time to pray during the retreat. If you're ever in the area, the Shrine is a neat place to visit. Check it out.

In an unrelated note, I am starting to work on the travel logs for my trip to Omaha (last May) and the recently completed trip from El Paso to Del Rio. Some day I'll get them done, don't worry.