Elsewhere Tom and I have been carrying on an extended dialogue about whether everyone is called to the contemplative life, and IF that is true, is it possible for persons with vocations that require a great deal of preoccupation with everyday matters to fulfill the call.
I quote here from a lesser known work of St. Thomas Aquinas:
from The Ways of God: for meditation and prayer
St. Thomas AquinasAnd last and above all, let us take tender care of God Himself, doing everywhere and always that which He most desires us to do and that for which He has particularly predestined us.
We must, therefore, as much as possible, flee all that disturbs us, for grace cannot dwell in an agitated soul. But to keep inner peace we need ardent devotion to God and love "as strong as death," because these have in us an effect like death, so that, seeing the evil deeds of our neighbor, we do not see them; hearing words that could harm us or that are said against us, we do not hear them; and so our heart is not occupied with these things.
We must, in imitation of David, be like the blind, the deaf, and the dumb, and like men without feeling. "But I as a deaf man heard not, and as a dumb man not opening his mouth."
Let us, then, give ourselves up faithfully and with fervor to the things of God. . .
(much later)
We also should take every care to conduct each of our activities as well as we can, doing them by the virtue of Our Lord Jesus Christ, with all the desire of the Church Triumphant and Militant, and in the name of our Creator, as though our entire salvation and the praise of God and the welfare of all creation depended upon a single act that we do, as if we should never again do a like act, or never again do another act at all afterward.
For each time that an extraneous thought, a turning of the soul toward something else, intoduces itself into our actions, the spirit relaxes in its present work.
Tell me that the middle two paragraphs don't prefigure St. John of the Cross's discussions of "nights of the soul!" It is quite clear that St. Thomas enunciated and described the doctrine, at least in outline. I don't know his work well enough to know if this is expanded upon elsewhere. But here, he very clearly describes what "nada" means. Do not care for the things of the world, but for God Himself alone, and demonstrate that care by living out His will in the particular vocation to which you were called from before time.
Union with God proceeds from three main streams. The most important of these is Charity because it is the source and the strength of the other two. The other are humility and obedience. We cannot achieve union with God as married persons by abandoning our spouses and children and living on a mountain top--this is grave sin and disobedience, and kind of spiritual pride and avarice. Instead, the only path for sanctity is the path that God has laid out for us within our vocation. We must serve and love our families. Now, we know that God makes possible to everyone the closest possible approach. So it follows that union with God is possible within the vocation of marriage. That the living out of abandonment will necessarily present a different face than that of living out a religious vocation goes without saying. But because God calls us to perfection from within our lives and vocations, perfection must perforce be possible from that place. It is the responsibility and the privilege of each of us to attain perfection. Jesus commanded it, it is possible through grace and the merits given us for our works within our vocation.
