Not To Be Called Rabbi, Father Or Teacher? How's That? Series

Tuesday of the 3rd Week in Course 2020

St. Thomas Aquinas

This Gospel from a late chapter in St. Matthew’s Gospel has caused a great deal of ink to be spilled, especially in the dialogue or dispute between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics call priests “Father,” and the pope the “Holy Father.” Fundamentalist Protestants object, and use this passage as a weapon. The problem with that is that even St. Paul referred to himself as “father” when speaking of his relationship with his converts. Let’s dig a little deeper.

Matthew’s story relates to us what Jesus thought of the Pharisees. The picture is not very pretty. Jesus condemned the Pharisees, the “separate ones,” for their hypocrisy. Moreover, he does so on several occasions. Here, Jesus is really contrasting the leadership and teaching office exercised by the Pharisees with the leadership and teaching of Himself and His disciples. The Pharisees did not live to serve, they lived and taught and dressed in a particular way to be thought well of. They craved adulation, power, and self-righteousness. Think of the story Jesus told of the Pharisee and tax collector praying in the Temple. He pointedly had the Pharisee “praying to himself,” because at least some of that sect seemed to value themselves and their opinions more highly than God’s.

So Jesus says to His disciples, “the Pharisees love to be called ‘rabbi’ by the people.” He continues, then, telling Christians not to value those titles as honorifics, but as calls to service and humility. The terms “rabbi,” “father” and “teacher” are not so much honors to be savored as challenges to serve those being taught or fathered, or led. Leaders, like Christ, are to give service to those entrusted to their care, and to set aside any praise or adulation. You’ll note on multiple occasions Jesus does exactly that. When folks wanted to make Him a rock star, or king, He fled. Not only did the Son of Man come to serve, not to be served, He insisted that the ones who follow Him take that as the pattern of life.

The words from the late Old Testament book of Wisdom should help us understand the great teaching saints like Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, and today’s saint, Thomas Aquinas. This is Catholic schools week precisely because it celebrates saints like Thomas. He was without doubt the greatest theologian of his age, and probably of the whole second millennium of the Church. He is called the “Angelic Doctor” and the “Common Doctor” of the Church, and his major works like the Summa theologica still occupy important places in the Church’s theology. They are, in fact, timeless. But it is his devotion to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist that has the most important day to day effect in our lives, in our striving to become saints like him. The feast of Corpus Christi, now known as the “Body and Blood of Christ”, was instituted when he was in his thirties, and Pope Urban IV requested that Thomas write the day’s Office. “Some of the hymns that Thomas wrote for the feast of Corpus Christi are still sung today, such as the Pange Lingua (whose penultimate verse is the famous Tantum Ergo), and Panis Angelicus.

I strongly recommend you read Chesterton’s book on Thomas Aquinas, widely considered to be the best biography available. In an earlier article, Chesterton wrote: “. . .he could be compared with other saints or theologians, as mystic rather than dogmatic. For he was, like a sensible man, a mystic in private and a philosopher in public. He had ‘religious experience’ all right; but he did not, in the modern manner, ask other people to reason from his experience. He only asked them to reason from their own experience. His experiences included well-attested cases of levitation in ecstasy; and the Blessed Virgin appeared to him, comforting him with the welcome news that he would never be a Bishop.”

Thomas appealed to Chesterton, I think, because both were oversized men, certainly in their physique, but more so in their minds. Whenever thoughtful pastors or theologians get into a mental logjam about things theological, they look for what Thomas wrote about the matter. In my case, I can attest that he is every time a great help. But in this hour of peril, when so many people are spouting nonsense about God or the Church or our government, there may be no better response than to look to the heavens and pray, “St. Thomas Aquinas, intercede for us.”