Mindfulness and the Discernment of Passions: Insights from Thomas Aquinas

The general concept of mindfulness is an essential—if sometimes overlooked—aspect of Christian spirituality and morality. In a recent article, Aloysius Pieris, S.J., helps to rectify this by drawing attention to a rich biblical tradition of mindfulness understood as “recollection and recognition.” In this biblical paradigm, believers mindfully recall the acts of mercy that God has enacted on behalf of God’s people and recognize God’s continuing presence and promise of loving care, especially for the poor, now and into the future.¹ In his defense of this biblical tradition, he suggests that the scholastic tradition is of little use for appreciating the role of mindfulness in Christian spirituality. In particular, he claims that “Thomism is deafeningly silent about the ancient practice of discernment, with its emphasis more on the virtue of prudence.”² I want to suggest, however, that Thomas Aquinas’s richly descriptive account of the relationship between the passions and prudence implies a certain kind of awareness and capacity for mature discernment of one’s desires. Although Aquinas does not use the language of mindfulness in the way it is understood in contemporary spiritual practices, he should not be overlooked for the potential resources his approach to theology can provide for cultivating mindfulness.

It is fair to claim that certain manifestations of scholasticism, in particular the neo-scholasticism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fixated on abstract analysis divorced from practical experience. One of the great insights, however, of more recent scholarship on Aquinas is that these scholars have highlighted the ways in which Aquinas was steeped in biblical theology, informed by the theology of the monastic and early church theologians, and concerned to address the practical and spiritual needs of his medieval context.³ Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., one of the preeminent living historians of Aquinas, writes the following:

It may be surprising to see [Aquinas] presented as a spiritual master. . . . The figure who at times seems to be known only for his philosophy is also first and foremost a theologian, a commentator on Sacred Scripture, an attentive student of the Fathers of the Church, and a man concerned about the spiritual and pastoral repercussions of his teaching.⁴

Discussions of the passions among the monastic writers in the Greek-speaking East such as Evagrius Pontus are more well-known. Awareness of the importance of the passions can also be found in the Latin-speaking West, especially through the writings of John Cassian and Gregory the Great. Aquinas’s familiarity with this tradition is attested to by the following three pieces of biographical information. First, he spent between nine or ten years as an oblate of the Benedictines at Monte Cassino prior to becoming a Dominican friar. Second, he kept a copy of Cassian’s Collationes throughout his life. And third, his moral and spiritual theology in the Summa Theologiae makes frequent references to Gregory.⁵ Torrell concludes by claiming that “there is no need to add to his theology, because it already leads to piety. We only need to pursue the full extent of what the theology itself requires of us.”⁶ Thus, my goal in this essay is to pursue an exploration of the kind of mindfulness that Aquinas’s discussion of the passions and the virtue of prudence implies and its ongoing significance for Christian spirituality and morality.

In light of recent popular interest in the role of mindfulness in Christian spirituality and Pieris’ critiques of Thomism, it is worthwhile to consider the implications of what Aquinas has to say regarding awareness of the passions in his Christian anthropology.⁷ Aquinas distinguishes between two types of basic human desires—passions and affections. The passions are the embodied movements of attraction or aversion that one experiences in response to internal or external stimuli. He describes passions as desires that are passively undergone by the person and which cause a “corporeal transmutation.”⁸ Affections, on the other hand, are spiritual movements (that is, non-embodied) experienced in the will, or the intellectual appetite, over which the person has more direct control. In...