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It was the year 1193, immediately after the close of the Third Crusade; our Saint was born in Bavaria, Germany, at a place called Swabia. His father was a count of local fame. After his youthful education, he continued his upper level studies at the University of Padua—known for its classical education of the liberal arts—a man uniquely qualified to study these subjects.
As a brilliant student he came under the irresistible preaching of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, the second Master of the Order of Preachers. He joined the Order of Preachers in 1223 A.D., known as the Dominicans. The Saint lectured at many schools in Germany and in 1245 he reported to the University of Paris where he received his doctorate degree in theology. Known as the universal doctor or teacher, for his study of the beauty of the natural order, and for his study of creation, revelation, and science, he became the expositor of faith and reason.
Who is this saint from the 13th Century with a 21st Century significance? And, why is he significant to you and me?
In the modern world we live in, there is a growing belief in a gulf between faith and reason, as if faith and reason are opposed to one another; yet the Saint we speak of now, while a Saint of the 13th Century, is as relevant today as ever; a relevance that bridges 800 years.
One might presume that this narrative is about St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, so named, of the same 13th Century. It is not. St. Thomas was the pupil of this great Saint at the University of Paris in the 1240s. St. Thomas became the great Saint’s close colleague and his good friend in later years.
Imagine for a moment to be the teacher and preacher to the youthful St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the world’s greatest theologians. It is no wonder we called this Saint “the Great.”
In 1248, the so called “Universal Doctor” returned to his home country, where he was elected the provincial of the Dominican Order in Germany. St. Thomas Aquinas followed him to Germany.
He was a notable preacher and teacher, renowned throughout Europe. True to the Dominican charism of teaching as a form of preaching, the Saint’s passion for knowledge of God and God’s Creation he loved to share with his students and congregation.
Noted for his leadership, at an assembly of the friars of the Dominican Order in 1250, the Saint set up a system of study and graduation for the Order, setting in course the method of formation for Dominican friars.
His lifelong library of writings is encyclopedic; advancing the divine science of theology and with equal vigor the study of the natural sciences. The Saint we speak of was a great preacher of the divine knowledge of God and a great teacher and student of the natural sciences; his knowledge of was wide and vast—with his knowledge of physics, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry, zoology and physiology.
Our Saint said that the focus of science is to investigate the “causes that are in nature.” In studying science, he says that we “inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass.”
The irony does not escape the modern faithful; especially considering this Dominican Saint who at the height of the Faith that he practiced and resting on the idea of objective reality; he helped to formulate the experimental sciences and the scientific method—an inestimable influence that helped to be the well-spring of knowledge to the applied sciences.
St. Albertus Magnus, aka St. Albert the Great, doctor, priest, professor, scientist, preacher, bishop, and priest who said Holy Mass and preached daily, heard confessions, ministered to the sick and dying, baptized the faithful, who was a priest…proved in his time of the 13th Century—800 years ago—and for us in the 21st Century that the Church was not and IS not opposed to the study of nature with science, that faith and science go hand in hand, where one cannot be without the other without creating disorder.
St. Albert the Great gives to us an exposition and love for faith and reason; teaching that theology, the study of revealed truth, is the master of all other inferior or natural sciences. For the study of Theology is the study of God Himself.
Our beloved Dominican Saint Albert the Great, the universal doctor of the Church, was canonized in 1931, by Pope Pius XV and we celebrate this great reveal of truth, on November 15th of each year.
Faith and reason are instruments for us to learn the Truth. Reason to understand the natural world; and by faith to learn of divine and eternal things. By the use of reason, as the second Vatican Council stated, God can be known certainly through the light of human reason. As it says in the Scriptures at the Book of Romans 1:20; this certain knowledge of Him can be known to all men and women “with firm certainty and without the contamination of error.”
Yet, with faith, the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen, as it says in the Book of Hebrews (Hebrews 11:1), God, through faith, opens to mankind the divine benefits and wisdom—as the Vatican II council states—which entirely surpasses the powers of the human mind to understand in the natural order. With faith, we can understand divine truths.
It was through St. Albert and his contemporaries that the dawn of applied science began to change the world. It is in our troubled age, for people to once again understand how faith and reason are to be applied in seeking the Truth, in making the world a better place, and for the ultimate purpose of the salvation of souls.
It is here where St. Albert’s understanding of faith and reason can be applied to the modern world: to seek the Truth. As Pope Benedict says, “it is important to recall the truths of faith and of reason never contradict one another. It is our duty our struggle to arrive at the Truth, for ourselves and for the greater human community.
Where truth is accepted and understood, it serves all members of society by purifying our reason, ensuring that it remains open to the consideration of ultimate truths.”
If we as Catholics abandon Faith and see science and reason as the enemy of Faith, rationalism arises. It admits to no objective Truth. All is relative. Human life becomes cheap, men and women objects to be manipulated, and the immoral killing of innocent persons becomes the lawful norm. Expediency is the measure of ethics and politics. Christ is abandoned. Anything goes.
On the other hand, if we abandon reason, and look to faith alone, fideism rises; feelings and experiences become the measuring stick of truth. Mysticism and superstition spread. The universal Faith that guides the world is abandoned and we become the priest and prophet of our own personal church.
Therefore, faith and reason are “like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth” as St. John Paul II says; he notes that “God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come to the fullness of the truth about themselves."
It is in these footsteps of St. Albert’s, Lay Dominicans study and strive to comprehend the wonders of Creation, the natural order, and all the truths of the Faith, to grasp the goodness and beauty of God. It is this one path of faith and reason together, that can bring us to the fullness of the knowledge of God.
Pray to St. Albert the Great for our world and the triumph of the Cross over the minds and souls of humankind.
November 15, 2023
