I pray to St Thomas Aquinas daily, but have a question about him:

Is it known whether he did penance on a regular basis?
I ask this because I wonder how God judged him worthy of sainthood upon death if he did not do regular penance. Perhaps his good works in the Summa obtained forgiveness from God to some degree, but at the end of the day he was still a sinner who needed all of his life's sins forgiven. I wonder did he do any penance because this is not ever said of him.

Today is the traditional feastday of St. Thomas Aquinas, Common Doctor of the Catholic Church, Patron of All Catholic Schools. March 7 is the birthday of the Angelic Doctor into eternal life, at the age of 49, en route to the General Council at Lyons. In his honor, it seems fitting to share the story of his death, as told by Bernard Gui in the Vitae Sancti Thomae Aquinatis:
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St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us: obtain for us the grace to imitate your humility, devotion, and obedience, and some share of your wisdom, that we may live and die as you lived and died, in faithful communion with Christ and His Holy Church. Amen.

Imagine accomplishing all that before the age of 50.  


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As for the penance question, I don't think you're going to find many saints describing the penances they did.  If anything, you'll see others talking about them, for example, St. Mary Magdalene, whose sins were forgiven by Our Lord in person, and she stood at foot of the Cross, collecting His Precious Blood.  Yet she later went to live in a cold, damp cave in France for many years, from whence she would emerge daily to assist at Holy Mass at no short distance away from there.  She willingly did this in expiation for her sins and the sins of others.  

Penance for sins is Catholic dogma.  Our Lady came at Fatima, and other apparitions, to remind us of the importance of doing penance for our sins.  It would seem she had to do this because the errors of protestantism and apostates share in common the denial of the efficacy of works.  But even after Fatima (and Akita, later, with the same message of penance), still there is Newchurch downplaying the importance of penance, removing the word "Penance" from the Sacrament of Penance, and replacing it with "Reconciliation."  

They try to turn the attention of Catholics away from private works in secret and rather to make more public works of charity and civil activism and to do outgoing, conspicuous deeds for all to see.  There's nothing wrong with being a good Samaritan and the like, but there is also great value in keeping our works less obvious so as to suppress our pride.

People admire the miracles of St. Patrick, for example, and may like to imagine being able to perform them, but when they find out he took a penitential ICE BATH before going to bed at night, or his preference for BURNT TOAST out of the intention to do penance, suddenly imitating his works loses wide appeal.  

Visitors to the shrine of St. John Vianney, the Cure d'Ars, might like to imagine working miracles like he did, but when they find out his daily supper was often one MOLDY POTATO, suddenly imitating his works isn't so fascinating.  When he first arrived at Ars, the town was a raucous brawl of ale pubs at all hours of the night, but Fr. Vianney spent all his waking hours praying in his chapel.  Gradually, curious townsfolk came to peek in at him, and the mission grew, until he was found in the confessional as many as 17 hours a day.  That leaves 7 hours to sleep, eat (a potato), clean up and say Mass.  Talk about a life of penance!  By the time he was done, there were no more pubs in Ars, and everyone went to sleep at night after saying their prayers.

The practice of Lent has gone through many changes over the centuries, the earliest of which was a mandatory imposition of great penance during Lent because the faithful had begun to go lax, away from Apostolic tradition, so the Popes made what used to be voluntary among Catholics, into a new necessity by obedience.  At some points, it was forbidden to take both fish and flesh meat in the same meal, even on Sundays of Lent.  And all flesh meat was forbidden during all weekdays of Lent for many years.  Only later were these relaxed, so that suddenly after Vat.II, it was okay for workingmen to have meat during weekdays of Lent except for Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.  Still, the "A course" for Lent is to make great restrictions on meat, on perhaps all Wednesdays and Saturdays, or perhaps other days as well.

But we are not encouraged to go around bragging about it for some kind of reputation among men.  It is a challenge for Catholics to practice their faith and to encourage others to do so as well, and yet avoid the accusation of "trying to appear holier than thou," and so on.  

How would St. Thomas practice penance and yet not be accused of trying to appear "holier than thou?"  He would do it by not talking about it!  So if he didn't talk about it, and if he "didn't let his right hand know what his left hand is doing," and "closed the door" to his room and did his penance in private, so that the Lord, who sees in private would reward him, then how would we know about it?  

St. Anthony of Padua is depicted in art, holding the child Jesus.  That is because other religious in his community one day peeked into the keyhole of his door, in the days when skeleton keyways allowed such limited views.  What they saw was this very thing, the child Jesus standing on the table, speaking to Brother Anthony of the Friars Minor, and then climbing into his embrace while the others looked on, unknown to Anthony.  

So maybe if someone had snooped on St. Thomas, we might know more about his penances.


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