Aquinas Lafayette

Theology and Catholic Studies The Aquinas Institute provides a variety of courses in the areas of theology and Catholic studies.

The Aquinas Institute for Theology and Catholic Studies is a center for adult education in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, approved by Bishop Jarrell in July 2006. The Institute desires to foster among the Catholic faithful a deeper understanding of the faith and a personal commitment to Jesus Christ and the Church. The Aquinas Institute is commited to presenting fundamental themes of Catholi

cism in fidelity to Sacred Scriptures, Tradition, and the Church's Magisterium. In areas of theology and philosophy, the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas will be given a privileged place among the theologians and philosophers presented.

09/03/2026

Today is the feast day of Pope St. Gregory the Great, one of the four great Doctors of the Church in the West, and one of the Church’s great preachers and teachers. His works delve deeply into the experience of the spiritual life, and his greatest work, the Moral Reflections on the Book of Job, was enormously influential throughout the Middle Ages.
Two themes are examined with particular intensity and genius by St. Gregory the Great: compunction and loving desire. In his work The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Jean Leclercq, OSB, describes compunction in St. Gregory’s writings as “an act of God in us, an act by which God awakens us, a shock, a blow, a ‘sting,’ a sort of burn... [t]he love of the world lulls us; but, as if by a thunderclap, the attention of the soul is recalled to God.”
According to St. Gregory, compunction leads to sorrow and penance, and the tears of compunction allow us to “lift up the face of our hearts” to contemplate the things of God once again. At times, as we seek to lift our hearts to God, we are granted the gift of experiencing the sweetness of God’s presence. This gift is fleeting, however, and what remains is the hiddenness of God.
In the Moral Reflections on the Book of Job, St. Gregory describes both of these experiences—the sweetness of God’s presence and the pain of His absence—as God’s tools to “set us on fire in the love of Him” and to “increase the force of that love of Him by the heat of longing desire.” This forceful love is the path to union with God and is key to knowing God. As St. Gregory famously states, amor ipse notitia est: love itself is knowledge.
Pope St. Gregory the Great, pray for us!

08/27/2026

Tomorrow, we celebrate one of the great saints of the Church, St. Augustine of Hippo.
His numerous works have been incredibly influential for the Church, combining speculative brilliance with a deep and passionate love for God, evident in the many heart-piercing phrases from his pen that remain with us to this day. He remains as relevant as ever—not only in his thought, but also in the story of his life: a story of redemption from a dissipated and empty life after an agonizing search for truth and peace.
His story is immortalized in what might be his greatest work, the Confessions. In a work containing countless breathtaking moments, one of the most touching and mysterious is the mystical vision experienced by St. Augustine and the saint we celebrate today, his mother, St. Monica.
By the time this vision takes place, St. Monica has lived to see her deepest prayer answered: her wayward son has returned to the faith. She had spent years “wetting the ground” with her tears as she prayed for her lost son. Now, after his conversion, she receives a beautiful gift with him while they are staying in Ostia, “leaning against a window which looked out on a garden.”
The two begin to speak of spiritual things. In St. Augustine's words, “with the mouth of our hearts wide open we panted thirstily for the celestial streams of [the Lord’s] fountain.” Their conversation leads them upwards, beyond what can be sensed, as they “lifted [themselves] in longing yet more ardent toward That Which Is.” They continue higher still until they go beyond “the summit of [their] own minds.” Finally, with “the utmost leap of [their] hearts,” they briefly “touch” eternal Wisdom and sit in enraptured silence.
Scholars of St. Augustine have noted how the spiritual ascent described in this vision begins with the philosophical terminology of Neoplatonism. Yet at its decisive moment, Augustine uses a word that is deeply Scriptural and profoundly characteristic of his thought: cor—the heart.
At the beginning of the Confessions, Augustine famously writes that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Here, at this pivotal moment in his life, it is the leap made by a heart restlessly seeking God that brings him, with his mother, to the threshold of the eternal Truth, Love, and Peace for which the human person was made.
St. Augustine and St. Monica, pray for us!

Artwork Credit: Saint Augustine and his mother, Saint Monica, by Ary Scheffer (painting from 1846)

08/21/2026

Today is the feast day of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian abbot whose incredible life included his being a major figure in the Cistercian reform of Benedictine monasticism, an early and influential supporter of the Knights Templar for whom he wrote In Praise of the New Knighthood, a celebrated preacher of the Second Crusade, a founder of many monasteries, a diplomat, and an influential preacher, mystic, and theologian. St. Bernard was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1830 by Pope Pius VIII, and is known as the “Mellifluous Doctor.”
A consistent emphasis in St. Bernard's preaching and writing is passionate and vehement love for God. In one of his many famous sermons on the Song of Songs, St. Bernard speaks about love in this way:
“O love, violent, vehement, burning, impetuous, which dost not suffer anything else to be thought of, but, despising all things in comparison, art content with thyself! Thou confoundest ranks, takest no count of custom, ignorest all measure; thou dost triumph in thy own self over all the rules of opportuneness, of reason, of reticence, of prudence, or of judgment, and bringest them under control.”
A famous short work of St. Bernard's is On Loving God. In this work, St. Bernard speaks of the four degrees of love for God. According to St. Bernard, we begin at the first degree by loving ourselves for our own sake. Through concupiscence, our natural love of ourselves can become disordered and lead to vice. The second degree is love of God for our own sake. This is a self-centered love that focuses on the good that God does for us. As we continue to lean on God, we come to see our own helplessness and God's endless love and generosity. This leads us to the third degree of love, wherein we love God for His own sake. Here we recognize beyond our own needs that God is lovable simply because of who He is. The fourth and final degree is when we love ourselves for God's sake. St. Bernard believes this is exceedingly rare to experience in this life and, if experienced, is brief. The fourth degree involves an intimate and loving union between ourselves and God in which we become, in a sense, freed from our own self-concern. We see and love, insofar as we are able, as God sees and loves, participating in God's own divine love.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us!

08/14/2026

Tomorrow is the feast day of St. Maximilian Kolbe, one of the most beloved saints of the twentieth century. The story of his loving sacrifice at Auschwitz brings to mind Jesus' words: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). St. Gregory the Great once said that “the life of the saint is a living reading” (viva lectio est vita bonorum). In this sense, St. Maximilian Kolbe's life serves as a living interpretation of Jesus' words in Jn. 15:13.
The bold decision to offer his life for another prisoner is also an example of the creativity and boldness of love. In St. Kolbe's own words, “Hatred is not a creative force: only love is creative.” When confronted with the suffering of a condemned fellow prisoner, the love and compassion of St. Kolbe enabled him to recognize what love demanded of him and gave him the courage to act. The shock that his action engendered among those who witnessed it is an example of the way love subverts expectations and goes beyond what the world considers reasonable or prudent. In the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, this sort of love “ignores all measure,” going far beyond the worldly sense of what is reasonable and prudent.
Bruno Borgowiec, a Polish prisoner forced to remove bodies from the starvation bunkers, later gave this testimony concerning St. Kolbe's actions there:
“Father never complained. He prayed aloud, so that his fellow prisoners could hear him in order to join him. He had the special gift of comforting everybody. When his fellow prisoners, writhing in agony, were begging for a drop of water, and in despair were screaming and cursing, Father Kolbe would calm them down, inspiring them to perseverance.”
While speaking about the life of St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pope Benedict XVI noted that, at the final moment, when the guards came to inject St. Kolbe with a lethal dose of phenolic acid, the saint offered his arm to the guards for the injection while reciting a Hail Mary. The date was August 14—the eve of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for whom St. Kolbe had such a profound devotion.
Bruno Borgowiec was also the man who removed St. Kolbe's body from the bunker. After the war, he stated:
“When I was about to carry the body of Father Kolbe out of the cell, and opened the door, I noticed that he was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall, and he had his eyes open. His body was most clean and radiant. Everyone would have noticed this position and everyone would think that this was some saint. His face was bright and serene . . .”
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!

08/10/2026

JUST 3 SPOTS LEFT TO FILL!! Don't miss out - classes begin a week from Saturday, on August 22! Come enrich your faith and expand your knowledge of Catholicism.

Intro to Catholicism, taught by Sarah Mary Toce-Donlon, will touch on all things Catholicism, from Church History to theological developments, to topics such as the Trinity, Christ, virtues, sacraments, and Christian relations with Judaism and Islam.

08/06/2026

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, an event that St. Thomas Aquinas treats in Question 45 of the Tertia Pars. There, St. Thomas describes the Transfiguration as giving us a glimpse of the glory to come for those who persevere to the end. Christ revealed this glory to strengthen us on the path of faith — a path that is often difficult and filled with trials. As St. Thomas states, "Christ wished to be transfigured in order to show men His glory, and to arouse men to a desire of it." In the Transfiguration, Christ allows Sts. Peter, James, and John to behold, for a brief moment, "the glory of His clarity."
What does St. Thomas mean by 'clarity' (claritas)? He treats this explicitly in Question 85 of the Supplementum to the Summa. Claritas is the radiance or brilliance of the body that results from "the overflow of the soul's glory into the body." When the soul beholds the light of glory, it is illuminated in a manner proper to it. Analogously, when the body receives the overflow of that glory from the soul, it is illuminated in the manner proper to a body. Thus, when the disciples behold Christ's face "shining like the sun" (Mt. 17:2), they are witnessing an image of what the glorified body will be like at the end of time: an image of the glory that Christ will bestow upon those "who follow in the footsteps of His Passion."
We are brought to glory by Christ. Yet Christ is God the Son; therefore, in the Transfiguration, He is not receiving the gift of glory but miraculously allowing the radiance of His soul and of His Godhead to shine forth through His body. In this, Christ reveals an image of the end for which we strive. Although "it does not yet appear what we shall be," we know that "when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn. 3:2).
May we all persevere in faith to the end and be brought by Christ into His radiant glory forever.
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

07/30/2026

Yesterday was the feast of Sts. Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, the beloved friends of Jesus. These three saints are present or involved in many key moments in the Gospels, one of which is the raising of Lazarus from the dead (Jn. 11:1–44). This miracle is among the most significant in the Gospels and has been extensively commented upon by the great thinkers of the Church. Today, we will focus particularly on Jn. 11:38–44, where Jesus comes to the tomb of Lazarus, commands that the stone be taken away, and calls Lazarus forth from the tomb.
When Jesus approaches the tomb, which was a cave with a stone laid against it, He is deeply moved—not simply because He is standing before His friend's tomb, but because He is confronting the tragic reality of death and sin itself. As St. Thomas Aquinas states in his Commentary on the Gospel of John, "[i]n the mystical sense, the cave signifies the depths of sin." Lazarus thus serves as a symbol of fallen humanity, imprisoned by sin and death. Humanity remains trapped in this cave of death because of the stone covering the entrance to the tomb—the stone symbolizing, among other things, our hardened hearts.
After praying aloud to the Father, Jesus cries out in a loud voice, commanding Lazarus to come forth. Here St. Augustine provides a beautiful allegorical interpretation:
"He groaned, He wept, He cried with a loud voice. With what difficulty does one rise who lies crushed under the heavy burden of a habit of sinning! And yet he does rise: he is quickened by hidden grace within; and after that loud voice he rises... What does it mean? While you despise [Christ], you lie in the arms of death; and if your contempt reaches the lengths I have mentioned, you are buried as well: but when you make confession, you come forth. For what is this coming forth, but the open acknowledgment you make of your state, in quitting, as it were, the old refuges of darkness? But the confession you make is effected by God, when He cries with a loud voice, or, in other words, calls you in abounding grace. Accordingly, when the dead man had come forth, still bound; confessing, yet guilty still; that his sins also might be taken away, the Lord said to His servants: 'Loose him, and let him go.' What does He mean by such words? 'Whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven' (Mt. 16:19)."
May we keep the ears of our hearts open to the cry of our Lord!
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

07/25/2026

This course reflects on the Church’s social teaching from Scripture, the tradition, and especially from Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum to the Second Vatican Council. There's just a few weeks left to register! To see the full course description visit www.aquinaslafayette.org/currentcourses.

07/24/2026

Topics such as Trinity, Christ, faith, grace, virtues, sacraments, and Christian relations with Judaism and Islam are addressed in this introductory course. It is designed for those with a limited background in Theology or Church History. Visit www.aquinaslafayette.org/currentcourses for full course description and to register!

07/23/2026

One month until classes start! Visit www.aquinaslafayette.org/currentcourses for full course description and to register.

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