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"Et in mundo conversatus, sparso verbi semini" St Thomas on the Mysteries of Christ's Ministry, and on the lessons of His lifestyle.

The eagle eyed among you will recognise that, in the way today's conference has been

structured, the four papers correspond to the four chaplets of the rosary, the joyful, luminous,

sorrowful and glorious mysteries.

This is both obviously and deeply appropriate in this place, where the rosary is literally built

into the fabric of the church next door, but at first sight, perhaps I could be forgiven for

thinking that, in being asked to speak here, of all places, about the mysteries of light, the

mysteries, as my title puts it, of Christ's ministry, I've drawn something of a short straw

compared with my three dear brothers in St Dominic. The church contains, after all, not 20

rosary chapels, but 14, representing all but one of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious

mysteries, all but one, then, of the decades of the rosary as it would have been known by

those who commissioned the building of the church in the 19th century, with the fifth

glorious mystery, the coronation of our Lady, depicted in stained glass, unifying the entire

structure aesthetically from its place in the apse. The mysteries of light, by contrast, proposed

to the faithful by St John Paul II in 2002, are at least apparently conspicious by their absence,

and, as far as I know, the Fathers of the English Dominican Province have no immediate

plans to build another five chapels. The luminous mysteries seem, in a sense, then, to be the

poor relations here.

But, then, if you had asked St Thomas Aquinas, in whose company we are reflecting on the

rosary today, whether there were fifteen or twenty rosary mysteries, I suspect the Angelic

Doctor would have been somewhat bemused, as puzzled perhaps as a Victorian member of

the Dominican community here in North London would have been had you suggested to him

that his church was only three quarters complete.

There is, of course, a venerable tradition linking the rosary with St Thomas's Dominican

Order, and I think it's possible to be rather too dogmatically sceptical about that. It is true that

strings of beads had been used to count prayers, both by Christians and by others, for

centuries before St Dominic, so the idea of the rosary being given to Dominic by Our Lady as

an entirely new thing seems hard to sustain. Unless we wish aprioristically to assume that

such things simply don't happen, however, it doesn't seem to me intrinsically unlikely that a

man of evident holiness known for his devotion to the Mother of God should have had an

interior experience of her maternal care for his mission, from which emerged practical advice

about how to root his preaching in prayer. Whatever we think about all that, however, the

rosary that for centuries Catholics have depicted Our Lady as encouraging St Dominic to use

as a spiritual weapon in his struggle against heresy, and which would have been familiar

among the first few generations of friars preachers - familiar therefore to Thomas Aquinas -

was not precisely the rosary as we know it. In the first place, the Hail Mary would not exist in

its present form for another two hundred or so years: until the early modern era, it consisted

only of what is now the first half - ie, the explicitly scriptural part, with the supplication to

Mary as Mother of God to pray for us now and at the hour of our death added only in the 15th

century.

More immediately to our point, according to the available evidence, the fifteen rosary

mysteries in anything like what we think of as the standard form are also rare before the late

1400s. We have absolutely no way of knowing, therefore, whether St Thomas Aquinas ever

reflected on anything like the mysteries of light as rosary beads passed through his fingers,

but it is by no means impossible, and, therefore, I think it is not entirely inappropriate to look

to his works for insights into these mysteries. In what follows, then, I'm going to be making

unashamedly eclectic use of a range of St Thomas's writings, to see how they might

illuminate for us the luminous mysteries.

But why, you might be wondering, should we look to St Thomas as a guide to the mysteries

of the rosary at all? Obviously he's a big Dominican name, and the rosary is, as I've been

suggesting, a big Dominican thing, our sacred heritage, we sometimes call it - though, as the

wonderful initiative of this rosary shrine indicates, it's a heritage the Order of Preachers

gladly holds in trust for the Church as a whole. So, in one sense it's obviously fitting for

Dominicans in a Dominican Church to use the writings of a Dominican saint to shed light on

a Dominican devotion. But I suspect, nonetheless, for many people Thomas Aquinas, rather

than, say, Catherine of Siena, would be a surprising choice of Dominican celebrity in this

context. St Thomas would not be an obvious go-to saint when we think about the rosary for

many, because the rosary would seem to come under the general heading of "spirituality",

and his popular reputation is not, first and foremost, that of a "spiritual writer". If you

thought you detected scare quotes in what I just said, you were quite right. And part of my

not very well hidden agenda in this talk is going to be undermining the distinction, which I

think would have meant little or nothing to St Thomas himself, between "theology" and

"spirituality", between writers who help us to think and writers to help us to pray.

I think there's one further prelimary, though, that we need to address, before we look,

inevitably selectively, at the mysteries themselves through the eyes of St Thomas, indeed

some of you may have suspected that it lurked unsaid behind my opening remarks. Having

argued that the question of how many rosary mysteries there should be would have been

utterly opaque to Thomas, I nevertheless think he might in fact have something particularly

helpful to say to anyone who still finds - as I have to confess I occasionally do - that it is

difficult to integrate the mysteries of light into the threefold structure of the rosary with

which we were so very familiar before St John Paul's 2002 initiative, just as it would be a

fairly impressive architect who could incorporate another five chapels into this church

without radically distorting its proportions.

In general, from early modern times until 2002, overwhelmingly pray-ers of the rosary

moved straight from meditating on the last of the little that is known about the childhood of

Christ to a prayerful consideration of the events of the first Holy Week. Pondering the Lord’s

baptism, his first miracle at Cana, his call to repentance and to the work of preaching, his

appearing in glory on Mt Tabor before his Passion and his giving himself to his Church in the

Eucharist clearly fills a lengthy gap in the story of Jesus, and this is obviously - at least I

think it's obvious - a good thing.

So what is the difficulty? I think it's something like this: we are all born, we all die, we all

hope for heaven. These great biographical building blocks are common to us all, and we

have them in common with Christ, a fact that is powerfully underlined for us if we regularly

meditate on the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of the rosary. The circumstances

may be wildly different, obviously, but there is enough common ground here amongst all of

us to give some content to the idea of configuring our life to Christ through and around the

great events of salvation history as they are echoed, however faintly, in our own personal

histories. So, there is a venerable tradition, evoked not only when we pray the sorrowful

mysteries of the rosary, but also in many well-loved meditations for the Stations of the Cross,

for instance, of asking for the grace to die a death in conformity with that of Christ, and

indeed of uniting our sufferings up to and including the moment of our death with his. In

terms of the joyful mysteries, we can think in terms of what St Bernard in an Advent sermon

calls the threefold coming of Christ. Christ comes into the world not only in the stable at

Bethlehem and at the end of time, but also as we give birth to him in showing him forth to

our neighbours through our lives.

But at least some of the luminous mysteries do seem a little more specific, and, if I can put it

like this, Jesus-specific. We have all been born - and are also called to give birth, to give life,

some of us literally but all of us metaphorically; We are all going to die and, sadly, may all

have to accompany loved ones to the grave; We hope to go to heaven and join our loved

ones there: we all, to this extent, participate in joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. But

we're not likely, ever, to turn water into wine or institute a new sacrament. I can be

profoundly grateful that Jesus has done these things; with Mary his mother and mine, I can

ponder and deepen my response to his gracious generosity in doing so, but - in the words of

the prayer with which the rosary traditionally concludes, whilst I'm fine with hoping to obtain

what the mysteries of light promise, it is a little harder to see how I am supposed to imitate

what they contain. Why, then, do I think that Aquinas might provide a particularly helpful

way in to thinking about this? Fundamentally, it's because of his insistence on the reason for,

as it were, the whole rosary, the reason for Jesus coming among us at all.

And this, it turns out, is a twofold reason, though its two dimensions are in fact two sides of

the same coin. Though similar statements can be found scattered throughout the Summa

Theologiae for instance, one of its most succinct statements can be found in St Thomas's

commentary on the Gospel of St John. Reflecting on why the Lord calls himself the way, the

truth and the life, Aquinas concludes:

Christ is the way by which we come to know truth, though he is also that truth: Lead me, O

Lord, in truth, and I shall enter into your way. Christ is also the way to come to life, though

he is also that life: You have made known the ways of life.

Christ is the way by which we come to know truth, and he is also himself the truth.. Another

way of putting this, I think, might be to say that for St Thomas, the whole life of Christ has

something of the quality of a sacrament. What do I mean by that? As the CCC puts it, in a

definition itself heavily dependent on Aquinas: The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace,

instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. .

(CCC 1113) In each of the seven sacraments of the Church, in other words, something really

does happen, the sacraments are efficacious: not just symbols. We really are freed from sin in

baptism, Christ really is present, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist, and so on.

But, since he respects our freedom and seeks our friendship, God does not simply do stuff to

us, rather, he invites our cooperation by treating us as the rational creatures he has made us to

be, by showing us what he is doing as he does it. So, whilst sacraments are not just symbols,

they do have a symbolic dimension: they are efficacious signs Water is used in baptism

because is a source of both new life and cleanliness, and baptism is the sacrament of our

rebirth, and our washing from the stain of sin. We receive Christ in Holy Communion under

the signs of bread and wine because he both feeds us spiritually and inebriates us with the joy

of his presence. And so on. The sacraments, then, are both healing remedies for our

weakness supplied by the divine physician, and lessons given by the divine teacher, with the

perfect visual - and audible and palpable and tastable - aids, bread, wine, water, the voice and

gestures of priest and people - created by him with that very purpose in mind. As Herbert

McCabe, OP, famously put it, the sacraments both do what they show us, and show us what

they do.

We'll come back to this explicitly when we think a little about the fifth of the luminous

mysteries, the institution of the Eucharist. But, for now, notice how it relates to the quotation

from the commentary on St John. Jesus, in his earthly life, both teaches and heals us, tells us

the truth and actually is the truth that sets us free, and I think it's fairly clear from similar

comments elsewhere in St Thomas's writings that we're not supposed to understand by this

that sometimes he does the one and sometimes the other. It's not that, for instance, Jesus

comes along to tell us how to lead a good life, in the Sermon on the Mount say, or even gives

us an example of leading a good life in the way he treats sinners and tax collectors, and then,

in a quite separate move, perhaps because we've failed to understand the lesson or live up to

the example, steps in to enable us to lead a good life. To this extent, one of the bidding

prayers those of us who pray the divine office have been saying every Friday morning during

Lent is potentially a little misleading: it is not, as the breviary seems to suggest, that the Lord

"teaches us by his life" and "redeems us by his Passion". Rather, both the luminous and

sorrowful mysteries of his life are at once educative and redemptive. He teaches and heals

simultaneously, just as, in each of the church's sacraments, God is both at work in us, and

shows us how he is at work. In the Summa Theologiae, for instance, in a text we'll come

back to, reflecting on the way of life that Jesus led during the years of his active ministry, St

Thomas tells us simply, and apparently without exception, "Christ's action is our instruction"

But - admittedly the comment is put on the lips of an objector, but it's not this to which

Thomas is objecting - when dealing with the Resurrection, he remarks, "all that befell Christ's

humanity is ordained for our salvation". Everything Christ does, he does to teach us;

everything that happens to Christ, happens for our salvation.

And this, in a very profound way, helps to free us from two rather dispiriting interpretations

of the life of Jesus. We could, for instance, be very disheartened if we took the injunctions of

Christ to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, or to be merciful as the Father is

merciful, out of context. However hard we try, after all, we are never going to be able to do

so in our own strength: for that matter, we are never going to come close to imitating

faultlessly the manifold way in which the Incarnate image of the Father manifests mercy in

his ministry. But Christ does not only show us the way; he is the way and enables us to walk

in it.

At the same time what could it possibly mean for us as human beings, rational creatures made

in the image of God, to be saved, to be, that is, made whole, healed of the wounds that

prevent us from being in friendship with God, if this did not involve our minds being

renewed, our coming to see God, and ourselves, as we truly are, rather than in some distorted

way in which we are tempted either to presume we have no need of God or be tempted to

despair of his love for us? And, in turn, this means that salvation must actually change not

just the way that we see things, but the way we respond to them, the way we live. If Christ is

truly to be our salvation, this cannot be a matter of him swooping down from heaven to

rescue us, but leave us unchanged. Rather, it means our coming to be like him, to see with his

eyes and understand as he understands. The way which Christ shows us is is not just the way

out of a mess, it's the way of conformity to the Lord who has walked this way before us.

What I would like to suggest in the rest of this talk is that in the luminous mysteries in

particular, we see Jesus doing what he tells us and telling us what he does. Each of them, in

one way or another, has just this sacramental quality. It's worth bearing in mind, incidentally,

that the Latin sacramentum, from which, of course our word sacrament comes, is the usual

translation of the Greek mysterion. There is a close connection between mysteries and

sacraments, as indeed we are reminded at Mass when we are invited to confess our sins so

that we may more worthily celebrate "these sacred mysteries", though that would be a very

exciting topic for another day. So, meditating on the luminous mysteries should bring us to

see with the eyes of Christ, understand as he understands. To that extent, we can indeed hope

not only that we may obtain what they promise, but also to imitate what they contain.

1) In the interpretation of the first of the luminous mysteries that he gives in the ST, the Baptism of

Jesus by John, Aquinas shows particularly richly how the same event in the life of the Lord can be

both for our instruction and for our salvation. In fact, the baptism is instructive in a double sense: first,

although the sinless one does not stand in any kind of need of cleansing, his humility in approaching

his cousin and asking to be baptised provides an example for those who do, so it teaches us how we

should behave; and secondly, it is in itself revelatory, teaching us in narrative, or pictorial form,

several profoundly signficant doctrines. St Thomas stands in an ancient tradtition, of course, in noting

the Trinitarian dimension of the baptism: here, as, later at the Transfiguration, Father and Spirit are

manifested in maiking the Son manifest. Aquinas quotes St Jerome to this effect:

The mystery of the Trinity is shown forth in Christ's baptism. our Lord Himself is baptized in His

human nature; the Holy Spirit descends in the shape of a dove: the Father's voice is heard bearing

witness to the Son."

Moreover, somewhat ingeniously, the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove not only shows

us who Jesus is; simultaneously, it tells us much about the Holy Spirit himself. For Thomas, various

characteristics conventionally associated with doves are emblematic of the seven gifts of the Spirit,

by which, as Fr Vivian I believe will describe this afternoon, the faithful are established and

strengthened in holiness. Thus, for instance, Thomas tells us, compared with other birds:

The dove prefers the more choice seeds. This refers to the gift of knowledge, whereby the faithful make

choice of sound doctrines, with which they nourish themselves. . Again, the dove tears not with its beak.

This refers to the  gift   of understanding, wherewith the faithful do not rend sound doctrines, as heretics do.

Now, I freely acknowledge that pressing ornithology into the service of pneumatology like this is not

how we tend to "do theology" today, and doubtless it will not be to everyone's taste. Personally I think

it's wonderful, but in any case, it clearly shows us one way in which the baptism of Christ can be

regarded as a kind of theological lesson. In fact, Thomas goes further, seeing in the dove's proverbial

"simplicity" (as in "be wise as serpents but simple as doves") the disposition with which a would-be

Christian catechumen should approach baptism and in its gentleness an image of the peace and

reconciliation with God that baptism brings.

So, the baptism instructs us, in a complex variety of ways. It encourages us to understand our need of

baptism, and, correctly interpreted, provides a kind of catechesis on the nature of the sacrament of

baptism. It teaches us not only about the nature of the Lord's authority and its Trinitarian origins - this

is my Son, listen to him - but, perhaps rather more surprisingly, about the Holy Spirit who witnesses

along with the Father to the Sonship of Christt, and by extension, therefore it also teaches about the

ideal shape of a Christain life informed by the Spirit's indwelling

The baptism then, is clearly an example of an action of Christ that is for our instruction. How is it

also an example of an event that, befalling Christ, makes for our salvation? In his description of what

happened at the Jordan, where again he is profoundly dependent on the tradition of the Fathers of the

Church, Thomas puts it like this:

It was fitting for Christ to be baptized. First, because, as Ambrose says on Luke 3:21: "Our

Lord was baptized because He wished, not to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters, that, being purified by

the flesh of Christ that knew no sin, they might have the virtue of baptism"; and, as Chrysostom says

(Hom. iv in Matth.), "that He might bequeath the sanctified waters to those who were to

be baptized afterwards." Secondly, as Chrysostom says (Hom. iv in Matth.), "although Christ was not a

sinner, yet did He take a sinful nature and 'the likeness of sinful flesh.' Wherefore, though He needed

not baptism for His own sake, yet carnal nature in others had need thereof." And, as Gregory

Nazianzen says (Orat. xxxix) "Christ was baptized that He might plunge the old Adam entirely in the water

So, Christ is not cleansed in the Jordan, rather, water itself, through its contact with the all-holy one is

given the dignity which will, in due course, make it a fitting vehicle for the grace given in Christian

iniitation.And, highly significantly, although Jesus is sinless, he stands in solidarity with sinners, who are

cleansed only through their solidarity with him. That concept of solidiarity with Chiist is one to whih we'll

return .

What Thomas says here, then, completely vanquishes any lurking sense that his is exclusively a

moralistic, or narrowly intellectualist understanding of the work of Christ. It is not simply, in other

words, that Jesus gives us good examples, - though of course he does, the best possible ones, nor

simply that he tells us about God, though he is of course the perfect revelation of the Father. Rather,

Thomas is as sure as anyone in the Christian tradition that neither merely telling us, or merely

showing us, how we should behave is enough to set right what went wrong at the Fall. We need to be

saved, and we cannot save ourselves; nor is showing us the extent of the mess enough to save us.

Christ, therefore sets in train the process by which we will be saved.

2) Thomas deals most fully with the second of the luminous mysteries, the miracle at the wedding

feast at Cana in his commentary on St John's Gospel. In a lengthy - indeed some might say exhaustive

exposition, he suggests many ways in which this episode in the Lord's life might be said to constitute

"our instruction". It shows, for example, how misguided are those who confuse a true understanding

of chastity with puritan prudery: the attendance of the Son of God at a wedding celebration gives the

weightiest possible seal of approval to human sexuality; at the same time, his presence there indicates

the profound humility involved in the Incarnation: the One who invented marriage in the first place

just turning up and taking his place anonymously among the revellers at a village nuptials. The fact

that the miracle takes place at a wedding has a further symbolic significance for Thomas since it

recalls the intimacy of relationship between Jesus and the Church, of which, according to St Paul in

the letter to the Ephesians, the relationship between husband and wife is a kind of icon.

The marriage between Christ and his Church begins, St Thomas points out," in the womb of the

Virgin, when God the Father united a human nature to his Son in a unity of person" and, presence of

the Mother of Jesus at Cana is itself, for Thomas, also instructive. He reflects, rather charmingly, on

why the Evangelist mentions Mary before her Son: we are told that "the Mother of Jesus is there"

before there is any reference to the Lord and his disciples, and speculates that this might be because in

fact the hosts asked her first; Jesus being apparently a pious type who wasn't often seen at social

gatherings, and they needed to check up with his mother whether he'd be likely to accept an invitation.

But, much more significantly - and convincingly - he also finds in Mary's initiation of the miracle -

the nudge she gives to her Son with the words "they have no wine" - an image of her profoundly

important role in the structure of the life of the Christian, and thus of the Church, suggesting that it is

through Our Lady's continual intercession that we are brought into relationship with Christ, a process

Thomas doesn't hesitate to call a "spiritual marriage".

In its mystical meaning, the mother of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, is present in spiritual

marriages as the one who arranges the marriage, because it is through her intercession that

one is joined to Christ through grace.

Every detail of the scriptural account for Thomas has instructive significance. Thus, the wine

that has run out symbolises the human need - which Christ will supply in his ministry - for

justice, wisdom and charity. Meanwhile, the fact that he turns water into wine rather than

creating the wine from nothing - as, in his divine power of course he could have done - has a

profound dual doctrinal significance. First, it indicates that the stuff of this material world is

under the dominion of God, and thus refutes the kind of dualism that suggests the physical

universe is the domain of a lesser deity. Secondly, it shows that Jesus came not to establish

an entirely new order but to transfigure and redeem an existing one. And there is plenty more

where this comes form. Lessons in moral theology, Christology, mariology and ecclesiology

abound in this deceptively simple miracle story: it has much to teach us about how we should

behave, about who Christ is, who his mother is, and about the nature of the Church.

So, clearly, it is for our instruction. How, though, does what happens at Cana actually

contribute to our salvation? Actually, St Thomas tells us, it is precisely by being a source of

instruction that it does so. The symbolic significance Aquinas finds in the story is said to

"strengthen" the disciples, who, in their commitment to Christ will be challenged to taste the

bitter, far from best wine of suffering before finally coming to share the heavenly wedding

feast, and to bring others to faith. Although, as we have seen, St Thomas does not think

people need nothing more than being shown where they have gone wrong in order to be put

right, they do need to be shown, and the resulting clarifying of our vision is in itself part of

what it means to be saved, healed, made whole.

3) Earlier I suggested that it is a little harder with the luminous mysteries than with any of the other

three rosary chaplets to see how we are to imitate what they contain as well as obtain what they

promise, but clearly the third mysteriy of light is the exception here. All Christians, after all, are

obviously called to respond to the Lord's summons to repentance, and to play our part in bringing

others to do so too. It may not always in practice be easy either to discern what precise form our

proclamation of the Kingdom should take, or actually to put this into action, but the principal is clear

enough: we are all required to make our own the preaching of the gospel and the call to conversion of

life that it contains. I'm not therefore going to be saying much about this mystery. Amusingly,

though,eg the section where he considers the question most explicitly of how Christ's own life should

provide a pattern for ours, the section from which that phase, "Christ's action is our instruction"

comes, is one of several places in the Summa Theologiae where it is possible to see Aquinas

indulging in covert vocation promotion for the Order of Preachers. When dealing with "the manner of

Christ's life", St Thomas asks whether Jesus should have lived as a solitary contemplative, rather than

in daily extended contact with human beings. He points out that although there is a sense in which the

purely contemplative life, in which one is occupied solely with the things of God, is the highest,

nevertheless, "that form of active life in which a man, by preaching and teaching, delivers to others

the fruits of his contemplation, is more perfect than the life that stops at contemplation, because such a

life is built on an abundance of contemplation, and consequently such was the life chosen by Christ."

Thomas - as he flags up at this point in the text - has already made the same point in an earlier section

of the Summa in which he considers explicitly the relative merits of different varieties of religious

life. It is, of course, a complete coincidence that what he considers the most perfect form - one in

which contemplative prayer undergirds and issues in apostolic preaching - is the very form that has

been pioneered by none other than his own Order

The serious point, however, pertains to others besides Dominicans. All Christians are called, without

exception, to imitate Christ, and, for Thomas that means, above all, imitiating him in his charity, in

the outpouring of the love of the Father. Christ does this by teaching, he does it by miracles of

healing, by authoritative acts of forgiveness and demonstrations of power over nature. Above all, it is

manifest in his Passion and death, by which, as I am sure Fr Simon will be pointing out to you later,

we are both instructed and saved.

:4) Transfiguration

Aquinas gives no explicit reason for devoting an entire question to the Transfiguration at the

conclusion of the section on the miracles of Christ in the third part of the ST. It could, perhaps, be

simply because it doesn’t fit with absolute tidiness into any of the categories he has just listed, where

he deals with miracles which demonstrate in turn power over unclean spirits, the heavenly bodies,

human infirmities and irrational nature – the winds and the waves . Maybe, then, the mysterious

events on Mt Tabor deserve a question to themselves for the sake of completeness: this is yet another

kind of miracle Jesus does besides exorcisms, healing and commanding the elements to obey him.

But, more positively, if we think of St Thomas’ overall pedagogical purposes, perhaps the

Transfiguration isn’t so much an oddly unassimilable episode, as a uniquely significant one. His

treatment of the Transfiguration, as well, incidentally, as clarifying certain well-meaning but

somewhat Christologically one-sided accounts of the episode, abundantly suggests that it takes place

both for our instruction and to contribute to our salvation. I think it’s worth listening to St Thomas’s

own words at some length here, as he lays out his defence of the “fittingness” of the Transfiguration:

I answer that, Our Lord, after foretelling His Passion to His disciples, had exhorted them to follow the

path of His sufferings (Matthew 16:21-24). Now in order that anyone go straight along a road, he

must have some knowledge of the end: thus an archer will not shoot the arrow straight unless he first

see the target. Hence Thomas said (John 14:5): "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can

we know the way?" Above all is this necessary when hard and rough is the road, heavy the going, but

delightful the end. Now by His Passion Christ achieved glory, not only of His soul, not only of His

soul, which He had from the first moment of His conception, but also of His body; according to Luke

(24:26): "Christ ought [Vulgate: 'ought not Christ'] to have suffered these things, and so to enter into

His glory (?)." To which glory He brings those who follow the footsteps of His Passion, according to

Acts 14:21: "Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore it was

fitting that He should show His disciples the glory of His clarity (which is to be transfigured), to

which He will configure those who are His; according to Philippians 3:21: "(Who) will reform the

body of our lowness configured [Douay: 'made like'] to the body of His glory." Hence Bede says on

Mark 8:39: "By His loving foresight He allowed them to taste for a short time the contemplation of

eternal joy, so that they might bear persecution bravely."

The transfiguration, then, not only shows us something about Christ – it also shows us something

about our own destiny in Christ, something, not of what sets him apart from us but of what, through

his gracious initiative, we are called to share with him. Sometimes people talk as though what is

happening at the Transfiguration is that Jesus is here revealing himself in his divinity, as

though his humanity is but a mask which he allows on this occasion to slip. But this, St

Thomas seems to suggest – as indeed does the scriptural text itself - is a mistake. It's a pious

mistake, and it rests on a profound theological truth of course: Jesus is God. But it's

nonetheless a serious one. What is revealed as glorious on Mount Tabor is precisely the body

of Jesus, that body which he took of the Blessed Virgin Mary and which is, above all, the

guarantee of him being not only truly God but truly human also. Intriguingly, in fact, the

Transfiguration, the 4th mystery of light does have a place in one of the rosary chapels next

door - you'll remember I said in passing that the Mysteries of Light are only apparently

absent there - and it's the chapel of the Annunciation. Presumably the point we are supposed

to take away from this juxtaposition is that it is, precisely, in his humanity, the humanity he

takes from Our Lady and shares with us, that Christ is glorious, even though the glory is

generally hidden during his earthly ministry.

But Aquinas is equally clear – disconcertingly so – about the process by which we come to

share in this glory. It is not, of course, in virtue of some automatic process of evolution, not in

virtue of our unaided efforts at transcendence, as though the message of the Transfiguration is

"glory to man in the highest", as though we can achieve such glory in our own strength or on

account of our innate potential. Rather, it is in virtue of what St Luke tells the “exodus” of

Jesus, which he is about to accomplish in Jerusalem, in virtue, in other words, of his Passion

and death. And, notice that, significantly, it is not merely that somehow the Passion wins

glory for Christ’s followers in a manner external to them: instead, Christ calls his disciples to

follow him on the road that leads to glory, with the Transfiguration.This it seems is imitating

as well as obtaining with a vengeance: indeed, it is imitating in order to obtain.

5) I've been suggesting that the whole of Christ's life has the quality of a sacrament - a

quality we can see shining through with particular intensity, perhaps, in the episodes chosen

for the Church's reflection by St John Paul II in the luminous mysteries of the rosary. In each

of these episodes from the ministry of Christ, we see him both bringing about our salvation

and showing us that this is what he is doing. So all the mysteries of light are, we might say,

"sacraments with a small s" But the fifth of those mysteries is, of course, centrally concerned

with a Sacrament with a large S; indeed concerned with the central Sacrament of the Church's

life, the holy Eucharist. St Thomas - famously - wrote prodigious quantities on the Eucharist,

and in a wide variety of genres. I've chosen to conclude this reflection on the mysteries of

light with a brief consideration of two rather different texts; different, that is to say in their

form and context, but utterly unified, I think, in the way that they invite us to see the mystery

of the Eucharist as something we are called simultaneously to emulate and to receive, a

matter, as with all the mysteries of the rosary, then, of imitiating what it contains and

obtaining what it promises.

In the section of the Summa Theologiae focussing on the Eucharist, St Thomas, as is well

known, wrestles with profoundly weighty metaphysical concerns: does the bread and wine

really become the body and blood of Christ? If so, what can this possibly mean? Did Christ

receive his own body and blood at the Last Supper? But, in a question on the matter of the

sacrament, on the raw physical material used at Mass, he also asks a series of what, at first

sight, look much more trivial questions, questions that we might, for want of a better word,

call rubrical. Thus, for instance, is it necessary to add water to the chalice at Mass, and, if so,

how much? Would it be possible, in places where grapes do not grow, to substitute wine

made with pomegranites or mulberries? What should we make of the diversity of practice

between the Eastern and Western churches over the use of unleavened versus leavened

bread? The question begins, however, with the deceptively simple enquiry: why use bread

and wine at all for the celebration of the Eucharist? There would seem to be both practical

and symbolic difficulties here. Practically, not everyone is capable of drinking wine without

harm and there are places in the world where it is difficult to obtain either bread or wine;

symbolically, if the oblation of Christ on the cross was prefigured by the animal sacrifices of

the Old Testament, it would surely make the point more clearly if meat, rather than bread and

wine was offered at the Eucharistic sacrifice? It has to be said that some of the practical

objections to the use of bread and wine here do have something of a straw man like quality,

and St Thomas spends little time in batting them away. The infinitisimal amount of the

accidents of wine contained in a sip from a chalice is unlikely to do anyone much harm;

bread and wine can be transported easily enough to regions that don't produce them. What is

more interesting is the symbolic question. With regard to the idea of subsituting meat for

bread and wine, while Aquinas concedes that this would indeed provide a more graphic

image of the sacrificial death of Christ, not only would it in itself entail practical difficulties

if animal flesh had to be provided for every celebration of Mass. More directly relevant for

us, it would be "less suitable for denoting the unity of the Church".

And it is, above all, the unity of the Church that Thomas sees as being shown forth in the use

of bread and wine in the Eucharist. Bread, which consists of individual grains of flour bound

together, wine produced from the juice of many grapes, both in their very structure suggest

not merely numerical oneness, but a unity formed out of multiplicity, the myriads of the

faithful bound into the one body of Christ, echoing, as Thomas points out, St Paul's

conviction that "though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread"

If we think once again of how each of the sacraments shows us what it does as well as doing

what it shows us, this is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the

Mass. In passing, near the beginning of this talk, I mentioned what might perhaps be a more

immediate answer for many of us to the question of what the bread and wine that become the

body of Christ symbolise, why it is fitting that God should have chosen these particular bits

of his material creation to be the means by which he comes to us in Holy Communion;

namely, that bread nourishes us and wine brings joy to our hearts. And there is absolutely

nothing wrong with meditating thankfully on that great truth. But, for Thomas, this one is

perhaps at least as basic. What God does in this particular sacrament is that he brings about

the unity of his children within the body of his Son which is the Church, and he shows us that

this is what he is doing by, amongst other things, the choice of raw materials for the

sacrament that gives birth, so to speak, to this unity.

And that brings us to the second text I wanted to focus on here in conclusion. It's a brief one,

and for many it will be familiar. It is the O Sacrum Convivium, often used as a short prayer at

Benediction, but in origin the Magnificat antiphon written by St Thomas for second vespers

of the newly instituted feast of Corpus Christi.

O Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of his Passion is renewed, the

mind is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given to us.

In the case of this luminous mystery, the answer to the question what it might mean to obtain

what it promises is perhaps particularly clear, clear, indeed with awe-inspiring glory. In the

Mass we receive - as St Thomas tells us here in the O Sacrum Convivium, a pledge of future

glory, a pledge of the life of heaven: this, then, is what we pray we may obtain when

reflecting on this mystery of light. But if we ask how we are to attain to this future glory, the

answer is in virtue of our membership of the Church, our membership of Christ's body, that

body which we enter in baptism, and into which we are built up by our reception of his body

in Holy Communion. In our participation in the Eucharist, the fifth glorious mystery, we

imitate - indeed we more than imitate - what this mystery contains. Rather, we become it.

And that is enough indeed to fill our minds with grace, to flood them with light.