Advent at St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish in Charlottesville started with the usual wreath with one pink and three purple candles in the sanctuary, as well as pots of poinsettias. This Advent, there was also something different – the skull of the parish’s patron saint.
The first-class relic of the great Dominican scholar was on display in December throughout the East Coast to mark the 750th anniversary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ death. The 10-city tour of the relic began Nov. 29, 2024, with two days of veneration in Washington, D.C., and ended in Baltimore Dec. 18, 2024.
Admirers of this famed 13th century saint had a chance to venerate the skull during the only stop of the tour in the Diocese of Richmond Dec. 2, 2024, in Charlottesville.
“You are here to venerate bone,” said Dominican Father Walter Wagner, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas, in his homily for the votive Mass that began the day of reflection, prayer and preaching.
“We are venerating the bodily life of St. Thomas. Because in this body, in his writing and in his thinking for the exercise of his marvelous incomparable faculty, he became a holy man,” said Father Wagner. “This is the man who taught us the goodness of our own body, the soundness of our own minds, as they work together to aim us and move us to eternal life.”
Missing the lower jawbone, the skull rests inside a reliquary created last year to honor the 700th anniversary of St. Thomas’ canonization. Each side of the box has three arched windows. The pyramidal top features an image of the Eucharist, two angels bearing a host and a chalice.
‘Very special person’ in the Church
Two lines of people formed after Mass to take turns kneeling before the reliquary and have it touched by a prayer card or set of rosary beads, creating a third-class relic. (A second-class relic is something a saint wore or used.)
Throughout the day, every five minutes or so, people would come alone, as couples or as families to take part in the ritual, including some Catholic Hoos from the nearby University of Virginia.
Parishioner Marilyn Millard was among the first participants. “St. Thomas is a very special person in our church,” she said. “And it certainly is wonderful, a blessing to have him here, inspiring us and hopefully enriching our faith as we go through life.”
A catechumen at St. Thomas who will be welcomed into the Church next spring, Zach Johnson was one of those who brought his own rosary. “I brought it specifically because it’s important to bring something that can help you reflect on something more meaningful than the object of veneration as just what it is, rather than what is underlying it,” he said.
A member of the parish for 50 years, Viktor Villar-Gosalvez said he brought scapulars and a rosary to the veneration. He said honoring St. Thomas was important not only to recognize his theological genius, but his faithfulness to his vows. “I know in today’s environment, chastity is one of the great failures in our society, and I think we can learn from Aquinas,” he said.
Parishioners Aaron and Glynnis Linderman showed up with their three boys and two girls. Aaron said the family had talked the night before about what to expect and why it was important. “We figured it was a rare opportunity, something important for our children to see, and to see that it was important to their parents and to our bigger life of faith,” he said.
“Our sense of life is bigger than this life and we’re looking forward to the life to come and the way that God’s grace is at work in everyday tangible things,” Aaron added.
Gabrielle Harlan said when she was very little, her mother took her to venerate relics of the Little Flower, St. Thérèse of Lisieux. So, she drove in from Richmond with her two little daughters and her mother for “the opportunity to be in the presence of something so holy, to pray in front of something so holy, and have the chance to put our rosary beads on the relic.”
‘Nothing but you, Lord’
Veneration paused several times to let the Dominicans at the parish share some reflections on the life and significance of the “Angelic Doctor.” Dominican Brother Nicodemus Thomas reminded the faithful that “doctor” in this case means teacher, not physician.
“There is no greater figure, no greater saint to learn the whole of Catholicism, the whole of reality like St. Thomas Aquinas,” he said. “Unlike so many other teachers who have their own specialty, that focus on one thing or another, part of his excellence is that he was able to talk about everything, about every aspect of sacred truth.”
The brother said St. Thomas had a great devotion to the Eucharist. Sometimes after celebrating Mass, St. Thomas would be an altar server for another priest. Brother Nicodemus told the well-known story of how St. Thomas knelt in prayer near the end of his life and heard a voice say: “You have written well of me, Thomas. What more do you ask?”
He could have asked for wisdom, like Solomon, Brother Nicodemus said, or for greater insight into the Eucharist or the Trinity. “Nothing but you, Lord,” St. Thomas replied.
The parochial vicar, Dominican Father Joseph-Anthony Kress, said St. Thomas noted the “double darkness” of sin and ignorance that obscures reality and truth. “He understood the depths of our human condition, the fact that, yes, we have the brilliance of being created in the image and likeness of God and yet, somehow we have fallen,” Father Kress said.
“And thus, we too live with a fallen human nature and the effect of that sin continues to obscure our life,” Father Kress added. The day of veneration ended with a talk by parochial vicar, Dominican Father Nicholas Hartman, a second Mass, an evening of Advent hymns and then night prayer.
The relic returns to the friars in Toulouse, France, after completing its international tour.