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Thomistic Mystagogy: St. Thomas Aquinas's Commentaries on the Mass
Thomistic theology is rarely associated with liturgical prayer, even by many of St. Thomas’s own disciples. Such a dissociation reveals more about the priorities of later Thomism, however, than it does about St. Thomas Aquinas, who himself devoted considerable energy to the contemplation of the sacred liturgy.In Thomistic St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Mass, Urban Hannon considers the saint’s teaching on the meaning and purpose of the various rites that surround the holy Eucharist. Drawing on four essential texts—two from St. Thomas’s earliest major work, two from his latest; two on the words of the liturgy, two on its actions—this book pieces together a properly Thomistic commentary on the Mass. “Because in this sacrament the whole mystery of our salvation is embraced,” St. Thomas says, “thus it is carried out with greater solemnity.” This is a study of that “greater solemnity,” and of how St. Thomas believes it relates to “the whole mystery of our salvation.”Praise for Thomistic Mystagogy“By introducing us to the mystery of God through his writings, St. Thomas Aquinas rightly deserves his preeminence amongst the great theologians of the Church. But it is often forgotten that such greatness is the fruit of the humility necessary to stand before God, daily, in worship—at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Hours of the Divine Office. St. Thomas was a true homo liturgicus before he was a theologian, and his theology is the rich fruit of his liturgical roots, as Urban Hannon rightly underlines. At this critical time of the life of the Church, may St. Thomas’s liturgical faith inspire us to return to Christ whom we encounter in a unique way in the Sacred Liturgy, so that we too may bring forth good fruit in due season!”—Robert Cardinal Sarah, Prefect Emeritus, Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments“In this brief but profound study, Urban Hannon leads us to rediscover the lost art of medieval mystagogy, as he shows the Church’s greatest theological mind drawing forth the inexhaustible meanings of the Mass’s words and actions, signs and mysteries. Clergy and laity alike will benefit from these pages, which are an incitement to reverence, praise, devotion, and contemplation.”—Scott Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville“Thomas Aquinas as mystagogue? This will come as a surprise only to those who imagine Thomism as a kind of abstract religious philosophy. On the contrary, the ongoing rediscovery of St. Thomas as a complete and integral theologian, and consequently as a spiritual master, draws attention not only to the biblical and patristic roots of his thought, but also—as Urban Hannon’s book successfully attests—to his deep theological insight into liturgical life, which is the ecclesial matrix of all Christian wisdom.”—Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., Angelicum“St. Thomas had much to say about the Mass—but one needs to know where to look. He did not write a stand-alone commentary; instead he made copious, scattered comments. Hannon is so steeped in the Master’s multitudinous writings that he can wander through them with ease, picking up tesserae with which to compose a mystagogical mosaic of the Mass. Thomas’s voice rings out brilliantly and provocatively, yet we hear it thanks to Hannon, who provides a set of keys to unlock the symbolism of the ancient liturgy of the Mass.”—David W. Fagerberg, University of Notre Dame
- GenresTheology
196 pages, Paperback
Published February 9, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 9, 2024
A story one sometimes hears from clerics who attended liberal seminaries in the 1970s is that, unlike the mystagogues of the East, the scholastics of the Latin West did not appreciate the riches of the liturgy. Obsessed as they were with the essential matter and form of the Sacraments, and the juridical and requirements for validity, the rest of the liturgy did not interest them. It was not till the liturgical movement of the 20th century that the liturgy was rediscoverd. Thus runs the story. A perusal of Thomistic Mystagogy, Urban Hannon’s lucid synopsis of St Thomas Aquinas’s various expositions of the rites of the Mass, shows how false the story is. St Thomas’s mystagogical interpretation of the liturgy is firmly in the shared tradition of East and West—a tradition to which St Ambrose and Rupert of Deutz belong as well as St Dionysius, St Maximus Confessor and (later) Nicholas Cabasillas.
Like all of the authors in that tradition, St Thomas takes the liturgy as given and reflects on its spiritual meaning. He is aware, of course, that there have been changes in liturgical history (he notes, for example, a change in the fraction rite), but unlike modern liturgical scholars, history is not his main focus. His interest is not in the historical origins and development of particular words or gestures (As in: Did the subdeacon holding the paten in the humeral veil originate in the ancient fraction rite?), but rather with how the words and gestures that we have actually received from the Church help lead us to real communion with God.
For modern liturgical scholars, by contrast, the contigent origins are often so important, that if a certain gesture no longer serves the function for which it was originally introduced, they think it should be abolished. Hence, for example, liturgists after Vatican II recommended the abolition of the subdeacon’s holding a veiled paten during the Canon.
In fact, the story about scholastic disinterest in the liturgy is not only wrong, it is nearly the opposite of the truth. As Hannon points out, for St Thomas, “any celebrant who deviates from [the received rites of the Mass] should be threatened with the loss of his priestly office—to say nothing of the grave spiritual danger in which such a minister places himself.” Contrast St Thomas’s revereance for the rites of the Mass with the attitude of Fr. Vincent Donovan, a missionary in Tanzania in the 1960s and 70s. Fr. Donovan was deeply imbued with the theoligical ideas of the time, according to which the aims of the Liturgical Movement were being realized in daring liturgical experiments. He describes his own practice as follows:
«So the first Masses in the new Masai communities were simplicity itself. I would take bread and wine without any preceding or following ritual, and say to the people: ‘This is the way it was passed on to me, and I pass it on to you that on the night before he died, Jesus took bread and wine into his hands, blessed them and said, This is my body. This is the cup of my blood of the New Covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in my memory.’ That served as Offertory, Preface and Canon. The people took it from there.» [Christianity Rediscovered (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1982), pp. 120-121].
Here we see a priest, supposedly enjoying the full fruits of the rediscovery of the liturgy, actually stripping the Mass down to the bare minimum required for validity. None of the great scholastics would ever have dared to do that. How is this to be explained?
To be fair to the Liturgical Movement, most of its proponents in its earlier phases would not have dared to do anything like what Donovan did. The Liturgical Movement itself underwent a serious transformation in the 1960s, often glossed over by those who see the 60s as the fullfillment of the goals of the original movent. The reasons for that transformmation are manifold: some are political, some are more philosophical—such as the malign influence of modern historicism. I am working on a longer explanation of that transformation.
To me it seems clear that the approach to understanding the liturgy that St Thomas shares with St Maximus et al., should be the primary approach. This does not mean that historical research is of no value whatever, but it should not be given primacy. Primacy should be given to theological contemplation of the liturgy as actually received—a contemplation that Hannon aptly compares to lectio divina.
This brings me to a question that has occupied me for a long time—a question which goes beyond Hannon’s book. What does it mean to contemplate the liturgy as received from the Church in a period when the liturgy has recently undergone far-reaching changes?
When I was young, in the final years of St John Paul II’s pontificate, there seemed to be three plausible approaches:
1. The “say the black, do the red” approach. This approach simply takes the current liturgical books as given, tries to celebrate them reverently and exactly, and unfold the meaning of the words and rites so celebrated.
2. The “reform of the reform” approach. This advocates in favor of undoing some of the recent changes to the liturgy. On this approach, for example, one might appeal to the Holy See to restore the subdeacon’s holding of the paten in the humeral veil from the Offertory to the Pater Noster.
3. The “traditionalist” approach. This approach adovocates a return to the pre-conciliar liturgical books.
The first approach initially seems to have the attraction of being the most ultramontane, the most trusting in the guidance of the pastors whom God has actually set over his Church. But the writings of Joseph Ratzinger and others drew me toward the second approach. It can be a service to the Church’s pastors to persuade them to undo imprudent disciplinary changes. And then Pope Benedict’s Summorum pontificum seemed to indicate that the third approach too is fully legitimate. As he put it in the letter to bishops that accompanied the motu proprio: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” It is clear that Pope Francis has a somewhat different view than his immediate predecessor. I wonder what St Thomas would say.
(Cross-posted from my blog).
Like all of the authors in that tradition, St Thomas takes the liturgy as given and reflects on its spiritual meaning. He is aware, of course, that there have been changes in liturgical history (he notes, for example, a change in the fraction rite), but unlike modern liturgical scholars, history is not his main focus. His interest is not in the historical origins and development of particular words or gestures (As in: Did the subdeacon holding the paten in the humeral veil originate in the ancient fraction rite?), but rather with how the words and gestures that we have actually received from the Church help lead us to real communion with God.
For modern liturgical scholars, by contrast, the contigent origins are often so important, that if a certain gesture no longer serves the function for which it was originally introduced, they think it should be abolished. Hence, for example, liturgists after Vatican II recommended the abolition of the subdeacon’s holding a veiled paten during the Canon.
In fact, the story about scholastic disinterest in the liturgy is not only wrong, it is nearly the opposite of the truth. As Hannon points out, for St Thomas, “any celebrant who deviates from [the received rites of the Mass] should be threatened with the loss of his priestly office—to say nothing of the grave spiritual danger in which such a minister places himself.” Contrast St Thomas’s revereance for the rites of the Mass with the attitude of Fr. Vincent Donovan, a missionary in Tanzania in the 1960s and 70s. Fr. Donovan was deeply imbued with the theoligical ideas of the time, according to which the aims of the Liturgical Movement were being realized in daring liturgical experiments. He describes his own practice as follows:
«So the first Masses in the new Masai communities were simplicity itself. I would take bread and wine without any preceding or following ritual, and say to the people: ‘This is the way it was passed on to me, and I pass it on to you that on the night before he died, Jesus took bread and wine into his hands, blessed them and said, This is my body. This is the cup of my blood of the New Covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in my memory.’ That served as Offertory, Preface and Canon. The people took it from there.» [Christianity Rediscovered (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1982), pp. 120-121].
Here we see a priest, supposedly enjoying the full fruits of the rediscovery of the liturgy, actually stripping the Mass down to the bare minimum required for validity. None of the great scholastics would ever have dared to do that. How is this to be explained?
To be fair to the Liturgical Movement, most of its proponents in its earlier phases would not have dared to do anything like what Donovan did. The Liturgical Movement itself underwent a serious transformation in the 1960s, often glossed over by those who see the 60s as the fullfillment of the goals of the original movent. The reasons for that transformmation are manifold: some are political, some are more philosophical—such as the malign influence of modern historicism. I am working on a longer explanation of that transformation.
To me it seems clear that the approach to understanding the liturgy that St Thomas shares with St Maximus et al., should be the primary approach. This does not mean that historical research is of no value whatever, but it should not be given primacy. Primacy should be given to theological contemplation of the liturgy as actually received—a contemplation that Hannon aptly compares to lectio divina.
This brings me to a question that has occupied me for a long time—a question which goes beyond Hannon’s book. What does it mean to contemplate the liturgy as received from the Church in a period when the liturgy has recently undergone far-reaching changes?
When I was young, in the final years of St John Paul II’s pontificate, there seemed to be three plausible approaches:
1. The “say the black, do the red” approach. This approach simply takes the current liturgical books as given, tries to celebrate them reverently and exactly, and unfold the meaning of the words and rites so celebrated.
2. The “reform of the reform” approach. This advocates in favor of undoing some of the recent changes to the liturgy. On this approach, for example, one might appeal to the Holy See to restore the subdeacon’s holding of the paten in the humeral veil from the Offertory to the Pater Noster.
3. The “traditionalist” approach. This approach adovocates a return to the pre-conciliar liturgical books.
The first approach initially seems to have the attraction of being the most ultramontane, the most trusting in the guidance of the pastors whom God has actually set over his Church. But the writings of Joseph Ratzinger and others drew me toward the second approach. It can be a service to the Church’s pastors to persuade them to undo imprudent disciplinary changes. And then Pope Benedict’s Summorum pontificum seemed to indicate that the third approach too is fully legitimate. As he put it in the letter to bishops that accompanied the motu proprio: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” It is clear that Pope Francis has a somewhat different view than his immediate predecessor. I wonder what St Thomas would say.
(Cross-posted from my blog).
January 1, 2025
This book deepened my understanding and love for the Mass and I'll be returning to it regularly.
February 22, 2024
For all his wisdom and breadth, most of us are probably somewhat surprised to hear that St. Thomas's most thorough and exhaustive treatment of Christian theology is not on, say, the Hypostatic Union, or the Mystical Body, but on the liturgical theology of the Mass. Needless to say, an encounter with our Common Doctor is always enlightening.
In this short book, Hannon leads us through Aquinas's Sentences Scriptum and Summa, expounding upon each part of the Mass and its multifaceted layers. Being well at home in a Dionysian-Thomist framework, Hannon is an apt guide for elucidating these rich truths of our liturgical tradition.
Lastly, there is an added joy in knowing that these teachings are not unique to Aquinas; rather, they embody an organic tradition, one especially ripe in the Middle Ages. When addressing the patristic liturgical authority, St. Thomas often quotes texts from the Missal, but says that the source of the Missal is St. Gregory the Great himself. In a day and age where we hear frequent concessions like, "at least it was valid", St. Thomas forcefully reveals that every liturgical detail matters when it comes to our relationship with God.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about this great gift we have as Catholics!
In this short book, Hannon leads us through Aquinas's Sentences Scriptum and Summa, expounding upon each part of the Mass and its multifaceted layers. Being well at home in a Dionysian-Thomist framework, Hannon is an apt guide for elucidating these rich truths of our liturgical tradition.
Lastly, there is an added joy in knowing that these teachings are not unique to Aquinas; rather, they embody an organic tradition, one especially ripe in the Middle Ages. When addressing the patristic liturgical authority, St. Thomas often quotes texts from the Missal, but says that the source of the Missal is St. Gregory the Great himself. In a day and age where we hear frequent concessions like, "at least it was valid", St. Thomas forcefully reveals that every liturgical detail matters when it comes to our relationship with God.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about this great gift we have as Catholics!
March 1, 2025
3.5 stars rounded up (Rating based on my enjoyment, rather than the merits of the text).
Urban Hannon takes on the task of showing St. Thomas as not just a theologian par excellence, but one whose theology is deeply informed by praying and entering into the Sacred Liturgy—a true homo liturgicus , as described by Cdl. Sarah. In the text, Hannon lays out the Angelic Doctor’s expositions on the Mass, scattered throughout his corpus.
“St. Thomas sees this Pax as the fulfillment of a certain symbolic triptych, depicting the three theological virtues in different parts of the Mass, where the Gloria pertains to hope, the Credo to faith, and the Pax to charity.”
“[T]he way in which the three pieces of the broken host correspond to three different groups within the
Church[:] First, the part of the host that gets consumed corresponds to those Christians who are still living on earth, since the living are united through receiving holy Communion… Second, the part of the host put into the chalice corresponds to those who have already risen in glory, not just spiritually but even bodily, like Christ himself [and] his blessed Mother… Third… the part of the host… still remaining on the altar until the end of Mass… [representing] those who have died and are ‘in the expectation of full beatitude.'"
“St. Thomas sees a harmonious symmetry between this ending of the Mass and its beginning, with the Communion and Postcommunion reflecting the Introit and Collect, bringing the liturgy full circle.”
I hope that this work brings about greater discussion on the role of the Sacred Liturgy on the well-being of the faithful.
Urban Hannon takes on the task of showing St. Thomas as not just a theologian par excellence, but one whose theology is deeply informed by praying and entering into the Sacred Liturgy—a true homo liturgicus , as described by Cdl. Sarah. In the text, Hannon lays out the Angelic Doctor’s expositions on the Mass, scattered throughout his corpus.
“St. Thomas sees this Pax as the fulfillment of a certain symbolic triptych, depicting the three theological virtues in different parts of the Mass, where the Gloria pertains to hope, the Credo to faith, and the Pax to charity.”
“[T]he way in which the three pieces of the broken host correspond to three different groups within the
Church[:] First, the part of the host that gets consumed corresponds to those Christians who are still living on earth, since the living are united through receiving holy Communion… Second, the part of the host put into the chalice corresponds to those who have already risen in glory, not just spiritually but even bodily, like Christ himself [and] his blessed Mother… Third… the part of the host… still remaining on the altar until the end of Mass… [representing] those who have died and are ‘in the expectation of full beatitude.'"
“St. Thomas sees a harmonious symmetry between this ending of the Mass and its beginning, with the Communion and Postcommunion reflecting the Introit and Collect, bringing the liturgy full circle.”
I hope that this work brings about greater discussion on the role of the Sacred Liturgy on the well-being of the faithful.
April 23, 2025
"After the example of St. Thomas, the right response to the difficulty of understanding the Mass is not to dispel the difficulty, to dispel the mystery, but to contemplate it." Urban Hannon synthesizes many different texts of St. Thomas Aquinas in providing a concise commentary on the various parts of the Mass. This is a side of St. Thomas that is not frequently studied or commented on, making this publication all the more pertinent, and a valuable contribution to the field of liturgical studies.
December 26, 2024
I don't attend the Latin Mass, but this book actually made me appreciate the Novus Ordo more! While it reads like a manual at times, it's obviously written with love. You see St. Thomas's love, as well as the author's, and it drives you to love the Mass more as well.
December 22, 2024
This writing is dryer than the Sahara. Could not get through it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews