Conjoined to Christ’s Passion: The Deifying Asceticism of the Sacraments according to Thomas Aquinas

Conjoined to Christ’s Passion: The Deifying Asceticism of the Sacraments according to Thomas Aquinas Daria Spezzano If asceticism describes the sacrificial mode of Christian life, and the liturgy is the source and summit of this life lived in Christ, then any explanation of the connection between the liturgy and asceticism must find its source in the wellspring of Christ’s grace and sacrificial love shared with his members in the sacraments. Thomas Aquinas provides the foundation for such a teaching on the nature of liturgical asceticism, in his theology of grace, charity and wisdom in the Summa Theologiae, which finds its completion in his treatment of Christ and the sacraments, and the Eucharist in particular. To outline this teaching, I will begin by sketching out a general context for the proposed relationship in Thomas’s thought between liturgy and asceticism. Then, I will attempt to show how Thomas offers a profound vision of the transformative power of the sacraments which penetrates to the heart of Christian askesis, a power rooted in the life of the Trinity, overflowing into the personal and moral life of God’s adopted children, and flowering in the very nature of Christ’s Church on earth and in heaven. Before we unpack this framework for liturgical asceticism, though, an objection immediately raises its head (in true scholastic fashion). Thomas certainly wrote about the sacraments and even to some extent the liturgical rites of his time; but did he really have a teaching on “asceticism,” a term which never appears in his works? Like his predecessor Augustine, Thomas did not read Greek or use this loan word in Latin, but in answer to the objection, he was inheritor of a profoundly ascetical Christian tradition, including the works of Augustine, which placed purposeful growth in virtue at the center of the graced life of Christian perfection. Because humanity is fallen, this growth involves not only the pursuit of the Antiphon 17.1 (2013): 73-86 74 DARIA SPEZZANO highest happiness, but also the overcoming of obstacles too great for us alone. So, asceticism will have both a penitential or sacrificial aspect and a joyful aspect, and it will take place through the synergistic working of divine and human power. Most fundamentally for Thomas, following Augustine, all asceticism is directed towards an askesis of the will: a training—or rather, retraining—of the heart, which has been turned away from God by the self-centered love of concupiscence, a turning back towards the One who made it for himself. This “journey of the rational creature back to God” through grace, and all of the virtues and gifts governed by charity in the will, is a central theme of the Summa.1 Basically, then, for Thomas, asceticism is the modus operandi of the moral life. It is an intentional journey in love—in sacrificial love—a perfection in charity, which is at its very core. And as John Paul II reminds us in Christifideles Laici, such perfection in love is the essence of Christian holiness.2 But how does this relate to liturgy and sacraments? If asceticism for Thomas essentially describes the intentional growth in sacrificial love which governs the moral life, then in order to demonstrate the connection that can be made between liturgy and asceticism in Thomas’s thought, I must show the link between the sacraments and the growth in sacrificial love which is characteristic of the ascetic life of Christian perfection. As a good Thomist, I will do so in three ways. First: by the sacraments, and especially the Eucharist, the memory of Christ’s Passion is recalled, which is the cause of our salvation —and also the perfect example of charity. Thomas teaches that all of the sacraments derive their power from Christ’s Passion.3 That is, in receiving the sacraments, all of the benefits of Christ’s Passion are applied to us. Christ Crucified is both the cause of our salvation and a model for our instruction. It is not surprising then, that the questions on the sacraments in the Summa follow directly after Thomas’s treatment of Christ in his Passion, death, resurrection and ascension—those mysteries of 1 See Summa...