Question about St Thomas Aquinas

[Augustine3]

I was told this beloved saint was an “over-eater” if this is so how could a glutton be a canonized saint?

 

[davidv]

I was told this beloved saint was an “over-eater” if this is so how could a glutton be a canonized saint?

All canonized Saints were also sinners. The fact that they were named Saints indicates that they overcame all of their sins and exercised heroic virtue in the last days of their lives.

So, even if true, it has no bearing on his Sainthood, as he would have conquered that sin by the time he died.

 

[JackVk]

I heard somewhere that Aquinas was a big, strong guy. If he was, then maybe he wasn’t “gluttonous”, per se. Just needed a lot of food to keep going.

 

[Scoobyshme]

All canonized Saints were also sinners. The fact that they were named Saints indicates that they overcame all of their sins and exercised heroic virtue in the last days of their lives.

So, even if true, it has no bearing on his Sainthood, as he would have conquered that sin by the time he died.

True, but with one exception: Mary. She never sinned.

 

[jpjd]

Even a saint was not perfect while he/she was here on earth. The Church does teach, however, that a saint is one who showed “heroic virtue”.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says this about herioc virtue:
"Benedict XIV, whose chapters on heroic virtue are classical, thus describes heroicity: “In order to be heroic a Christian virtue must enable its owner to perform virtuous actions with uncommon promptitude, ease, and pleasure, from supernatural motives and without human reasoning, with self-abnegation and full control over his natural inclinations.” An heroic virtue, then, is a habit of good conduct that has become a second nature, a new motive power stronger than all corresponding inborn inclinations, capable of rendering easy a series of acts each of which, for the ordinary man, would be beset with very great, if not insurmountable, diffulties.

Perhaps any given saint has heroic virtue in several virtues but not all of them. After all, they are only human.

 

[Biedrik]

I was told this beloved saint was an “over-eater” if this is so how could a glutton be a canonized saint?

One does not become a saint by not sinning. One becomes a saint by conquering one’s sins through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This is what St. Thomas Aquinas did. If he indeed was a glutton, he received forgiveness and was given the gift of salvation. He may have had to have a stint in purgatory, but he got to heaven.

 

[Victorious]

I have to stand up for my friend and brother in St. Dominic, Thomas Aquinas. As a child, he raided the larders in order to give food to the poor. He was noted for his great love of poverty and his love for the poor, whom he would give the habit off his back when he could not otherwise help them. And he had an ardent love of the Blessed Sacrament, the supernatural bread and food of angels, next to which earthly food must have seemed to him dust and ashes. He died professing his love for the Sacrament.

I haven’t found anything in my cursory bit of research on this that specifically addresses the Angelical’s habits in the matter of food, but the foregoing seems to me to counter-indicate gluttony.

 

[PJD1987]

Let’s not forget Saint Paul was a persecutor and murderer of Christians and Saint Peter himself a denier of Christ!! If sin is not overcome by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, then Paul is still a murderer and Peter still a denier, and all our faith is for naught.

The words of Christ, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” - Mark 2:17

We are all called to be holy, we are all called to be saints, but neither mean sinless, but those that overcame them by dying to themselves and living in Christ.