Aquinas High School - Trumpet Yearbook (La Crosse, WI)

Page 8 text:

From the lips of Saint Thomas of Aquinas, Dante gives an account in his Paradiso of the life and work of Saint Francis, which for brevity, accuracy and comprehension has never been equalled. OREQJOR D Dante, meeting in his Paradiso Thomas Aquinas, through him produces the most able biography of St. Francis of Assisi ever claimed by the fickle Muse ol Literature. That was in the thirteenth cen- tury. Now, seven centuries later, this Trumpet looks back into the heavens, to retell in print and picture the story First told to Dante by the patron of our school. The present century and the thirteenth cen- tury have an economic background with problems that in many ways are comparable. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest father of Wisdom and Philosophy, Thomas, son ol Dominic, friend to the Umbrian Poverello, told as a friend of Francis the story of that saint in the lull light ol Heaven's Empyrean crown. And as he arose to speak, the heavens were atten- tive to his every word: Therefore let him who speaketh of that place, Say not Assisi for he would say little, But, Orient, if he properly would speak for from out that slope, there where it breaketh most its steepness, rose upon the world a sun . . . Yet he lived not until God sent His own widow, Poverty, to teach him the walks ol life that meant eternity to him. Francis, the sun that rose on a new era, proclaiming praise where praise had been rebuffed, lifting from the sordidness ol poverty a clean soul, sweet in the eyes of God, building bridges that spanned the ravine ol difference between the two great classes of men, and calling them love, or as the modern world has translated them, his means ol social jus- tice, this same Francis meant his reform to be only

Page 7 text:

TH6 TRUI I-9-3- 'I VOLUNN6 QVWIWUQL DLJBL.. aQolnns HIEH LQ craosse, ku

Page 9 text:

personal, and then found it spreading to include vast multitudes of lay people. For was he not the sun? Does not the sun illumine the whole world? Has it not the power ol warmth, of love, of tenderness? lsn't the compounded Sun made up of Light, Obedience, and an intimate contact with every being? Francis too was illum- ined with God, he longed only to be obedient to his Mastery every man to him was Brother, He was the very essence of seraphic joy, of hu- miliation, and of sacrifice. The whole world called him a Fool, and he was glad. Francis died as the sun dies: at twilight when the long day is tired and the sun is as tired as the day it has served. There were birds who had stayed to sing for him for the last time the songs he and Nature had composed. And as the stairs to a new life were revealed to him, heavy lines of brilliant light crossing and climbing the darlcened horizon, he lcnew that Love alone endures. There was no more pain, only a cool, strange peace. And he who in life had lcnown only a weary road, was in death carried triumphantly on white wings into the Kingdom ot Love. All his life was love and because the degradation of the modern world has great need of that ele- ment, the Church offers a solution in Love, Poverty, and Obedience. Thus, because of his inspiration, Francis has been used as a Light for our yearboolc to carry the three elements composing his frail brown slceleton body and the one love he called Poverty, a procla- mation of social justice. Two friends, Saint Dom inic and Saint Francis enter prominently into Dantes conception ofthe Heaven of the Sun. ., 4?.vz:5'i,s .f zrlrz- -- - ' law: 3.4 l