10 November 2026
Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III: XLI Man’s Understanding of Separate Substances by Speculative Sciences
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 7 March 1274), was a Doctor of the Church, Philosopher, Theologian, Jurist, Dominican Friar, and Priest. Known as Doctor Angelicus "Angelic Doctor," and the Doctor Communis "Universal Doctor" his writings serve as a defense and proof of the validity of Christ's authority over all. The Summa contra Gentiles (also known as Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra errores infidelium, "Book on the truth of the Catholic faith against the errors of the unbelievers"). The Summa contra Gentiles consists of four books. The structure of Saint Thomas's work is designed to proceed from general philosophical arguments for monotheism, to which Muslims and Jews are likely to consent even within their own respective religious traditions, before progressing to the discussion of specifically Christian doctrine.
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Running as a Quiet School of Prayer
From Aleteia
By Daniel Esparza
A steady run can interrupt the noise many people carry all day: unfinished tasks, old worries, anxious rehearsals of what might happen next. The rhythm of breath and footfall gives the mind something simple to follow. For some, that becomes a doorway to prayer.
Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco, OP, archbishop of Algiers, recently drew attention by running the Rome Marathon. He described running as a “school of prayer,” and became the first cardinal to take part in the event’s history.
The phrase is striking because it treats running not as escape, but as discipline. A runner learns limits: fatigue, thirst, uneven pace, the temptation to stop. These are bodily lessons, but they are also spiritual ones. We learn patience by staying with the road in front of us.
Father Seth Arnold, a Wichita priest and school chaplain, offered another moving example after running the Boston Marathon in 2:35:45. He began the race with names written on tape around his wrist — people he was carrying in prayer, including a late classmate.
That small gesture turns a race into intercession. The miles are no longer only personal effort. They become a way of remembering others. For anyone seeking better mental health, this contemplative approach can change the meaning of exercise. Running does not have to be another performance metric. It can be a daily practice of presence: breathe, notice, continue, give thanks.
A simple beginning is enough. Run slowly. Leave the headphones behind now and then. Offer one mile for someone who is struggling. End not by checking the numbers first, but by noticing one gift: air, strength, sunlight, endurance. Peace rarely arrives all at once. Most of the time, it comes step by step.
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Cardinals Grech, Fernandez, and Hollerich, along with Fr James Martin, are named by Cardinal Zen in his missive to Pope Leo.
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A Hobbit and a Benedictine Monk Walk Into a Half Marathon
From Aleteia
By Daniel Esparza
Consistency, companionship, and the quiet holiness of finding your own pace: What running has in common with monasticism, old marriages, and the road to sanctity.
There is a kind of glory in monotony that we rarely stop to honor. Not the monotony of boredom, but the other kind — the deep, rhythmic constancy of things that ask you to show up the same way, day after day, with nothing to prove and no crowd to perform for. The sea at the same hour. Vespers at the same bell. The long run every chosen day at the same pace.
I finished the Mitja Marató Costa Barcelona Maresme recently — 21 kilometers along the Catalan coast, from Pineda de Mar to Calella, flat as a psalm and twice as repetitive. In all truth, quite a boring race. And yet. What stayed with me afterward was not the finish line, or the time on the clock, but the sensation of consistency — of having run the same race from start to finish, never surging, never dying, never cheating the rhythm. Not too slow. Not too quick. The same pace, held like a note. Even more boring, if you will.
The monastic tradition has a word for this, more or less: stabilitas. St. Benedict built his entire rule around it — the commitment to stay, to persist, to resist the restless temptation to be somewhere else, doing something more spectacular. The monk who stays in his cell does something the travelling virtuoso might never quite manage. He learns the shape of his own soul, so to speak, by staying still long enough to see it.
Running, of all things, teaches the same lesson in motion.
Your pace is your vocation
Every runner eventually learns what no coach can fully teach: the pace that is yours. You can study tables and formulas, wear the right watch, follow the right plan, buy great shoes, use the proper socks, and a long et cetera. But at some point, somewhere around the eighth or ninth kilometer, the body tells you the truth. This is who you are. This is what you have. You have to run from here.
The spiritual tradition calls something similar a calling — the Latin vocatio, from vocare, to call. The idea is not that some people are called and others are not, but that each person is called differently, to something specific, something that fits the particular grain of who they are. The great mistake is to run someone else’s race. To set out at a pace that belongs to another body, another life, another story. You can do it for a while but, boy, you will pay for it later.
The saints understood this with uncomfortable clarity. Allow me to use some running metaphors here. Francis of Assisi ran barefoot. Benedict ran slowly, in circles, in one place. Ignatius ran with strategic efficiency. Teresa ran through interior castles at a pretty fast pace. Therese didn’t run: she took the elevator. The point is that none of them ran the same race, and all of them ran their own.
You will never run alone
And yet. The image of the solitary runner, earphones in, sealed off from the world, is only half the story — and, I have come to think, probably the less interesting half.
Most of us started running because someone asked us to come. A friend who said there’s a race in October, want to do it with me? A partner who laced up at six in the morning and made it seem possible by simply doing it. The person who ran alongside you in the second half, when the legs were gone, and said nothing, because nothing needed saying.
Liverpool supporters sing "You’ll Never Walk Alone" — borrowed from Rodgers and Hammerstein, carried by Gerry and the Pacemakers into something borderline liturgical — and the line lands because it names something true about every communal endeavor: the courage to go forward is rarely generated alone. Frodo could carry the Ring, but he could not carry it without Sam. The burden was his. The companionship was what made the burden bearable.
Running, and spiritual life, are like this. The pace is yours — no one can run your race for you, no one can feel what you feel at kilometer sixteen, no one can decide for you whether to hold on or let go. And yet the people who made you show up, who run beside you, who meet you at the finish line or simply at the coffee shop an hour later, are not incidental to the story. They are the story as much as you.
This is what the mystical tradition calls communio — not the erasure of the individual in the group, but the deepening of each person through their belonging to something larger. The monk in his cell is not alone; he prays with the whole Church. The runner on the road is not alone; she runs with everyone who ever ran before her, and with the friend who called her last September and said there’s a race in October.
What monotony gives back
Consistency, in the end, is a form of faithfulness. The long marriage that does not need every day to be extraordinary. The prayer that persists through dryness. The training run that is not an adventure, that offers nothing except the quiet accumulation of capacity — the slow building of something that will hold when it needs to hold.
We ran the Maresme at the same pace from start to finish, with 21 kilometers of flat coast ahead. It was not dramatic. It was not fast. It was boring. But it was ours. And in the particular silence of kilometer 17, with the sea still there and the legs still moving, there was something that felt like a training ground for contemplation.
09 November 2026
Pope Leo XIV Talks Tradition… But Where Is the Action?
How the Devil Defeats Us
From Crisis
By Casey Chalk
Men need true friends who will support them, challenge their vices, and help them think through a confused world. To forgo friendship is to harm our bodies, souls, and minds…and it’s how the devil wins.
I know a guy who for many years has enjoyed quite a bit of respect in some Catholic circles. He’s bright and articulate, though, admittedly, sometimes he argues with a certain biting rhetorical edge. Over the years, I had noticed that his opinions had become increasingly extreme, and, though perhaps not heretical, pushed boundaries that placed him outside the intellectual boundaries of Catholic tradition on at least a few subjects. Recently, I discovered that because of a disagreement over some of those opinions, he had angrily disassociated himself from a community of Catholics who had consistently celebrated him and his intellect.
It’s a sad thing when arguments, whether intellectual or personal (or both), fracture or terminate friendships. That’s especially the case today, when such a startling number of Americans have so few, if any. Per a 2021 survey, the proportion of men who today have six or more close friends (about 27 percent) has been cut in half since 1990, and the number of men who have no close friends (about 15 percent) has increased by a factor of five during that same time period. A separate 2025 survey found that among American males between the ages of 16 and 28, about half of them had two or fewer close friends.
It’s difficult to exaggerate the consequences of these trends. Certainly from a political perspective, representative government is premised on the idea that citizens will maintain various types of friendships, both so that they can freely and charitably debate the most important issues of our time, but also so that they can form and maintain all types of organizations, from civic groups to volunteer societies to churches. George Washington in his farewell address urged, “That your Union and brotherly affection may be perpetual.”
The spiritual effects, of course, are even more dangerous. If you do not have close friends, or you isolate much of your inner life from those friends, trouble is almost inevitable. The yearning for relational intimacy, built into even the most unsentimental of souls, is ineradicable, and if it does not find its natural object in other people (and supernatural object in God), it will try to find it elsewhere. Thus do we have epidemics of drug, alcohol, video game, social media, pornography, and online gambling addictions among American men. More than half of young men play video games every day or almost every day, and more than a third of young men game two more hours nearly every day. Nearly 40 percent of young men say they view online pornography weekly or daily.
And then there are the intellectual effects. Well-documented is the fact that younger Americans are more receptive to socialism and communism, a result, no doubt, of the leftist lean of the academy, which has been radicalizing college students for generations. Alternatively, many young men identify with the conservative “manosphere,” “alt-right,” and (self-professed Catholic) Nick Fuentes’ “Groyper” movement. Antisemitism and fascist sympathizing are becoming more common among younger conservatives, evidenced by several scandals just this year. All of this only further reinforces the need for authentic friendship, which provides accountability not only for the moral life, but also the intellectual.
The point is not that men need to “think great thoughts” that attempt to rival the intellectual prowess of the Inklings, but that they need fora in which to talk and share and debate one another. They require a place to communicate what they value and think, but also to have their opinions challenged and honed. “In our arguments, we always were arguing for truth not for victory, and arguing for truth, not for comfort,” wrote philosopher, poet, and author Owen Barfield, known as one of the “first and last” of the Inklings.
Anglo-Irish scholar Nevill Coghill in turn observed that poet and essayist (and fellow Inkling) Charles Williams was the only one, besides Tolkien, who influenced Lewis’s thought. “It was Charles Williams who expounded to him the doctrine of co-inherence and the idea that one had power to accept into one’s own body the pain of someone else, through Christian love,” explained Coghill. “This was a power which Lewis found himself later to possess, and which, he told me, he had been allowed to use to ease the suffering of his wife, a cancer victim, of whom the doctors had despaired.”
That visceral example shows that the intellectual component of friendships isn’t some cerebral, esoteric exercise reserved only for the brainiacs of this world. It is a means to help us navigate the troubles and sorrows of this world, equipping us with the knowledge necessary to practice virtue and refute vice, but also to understand suffering and make sense of social and political trends happening around us. “A friend, and a prudent friend, can help to shape a friend’s decision. He does so by virtue of that love which makes the friend’s problem his own, the friend’s ego his own,” writes Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper in The Four Cardinal Virtues.
“Every friendship is an act of opposition to a society that desires to conform and homogenize,” sagely writes Birzer. It is also an act of opposition to the devil, who in all things aims to achieve the diabolical, which is more than simply evil, but that which divides and dissociates. We were made for authentic communion, not only with God, but with each other. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, emphasis added). To forgo or minimize the role of friendship in our lives is to harm our bodies, souls, and minds, because it is integral to our this-worldly flourishing and our salvation. It is how the devil wins.
St Andrew Avellino, Confessor, & Ss Tryphon, Respicius, & Nympha, Martyrs
In the sixteenth century, in reply to the reproach of exhaustion hurled against the Church, the Holy Ghost raised from her soil an abundant harvest of sanctity. Andrew was one of his most worthy cooperators in the work of holy reformation and supernatural renaissance, which then took place. Eternal Wisdom had as usual suffered Satan to go before, for his own greater shame, cloaking his evil works under the grand names of renaissance and reform.
It was nine years since St. Cajetan had departed this world, leaving it strengthened by his labors and all embalmed with the fragrance of his virtues; the former Bishop of Theate, his companion and collaborator in founding the first Regular Clerks, was now governing the Church under the name of Paul IV; when in 1556 God bestowed upon the Theatines, in the person of our Saint, an heir to the supernatural gifts, the heroic sanctity, and the zeal for the sanctuary, that had characterized their father. Andrew was the friend and support of the great Bishop of Milan, St. Charles Borromeo, whose glory in heaven he went to share on this day. His pious writings are still used in the Church. He himself formed some admirable disciples, such as Laurence Scupoli, author of the well-known work so prized by the Bishop of Geneva, the Spiritual Combat.
Nothing need be added to the following history of his life.
Andrew Avellino, formerly called Lancelot, was born at Castro Nuovo in Lucania; and, while still an infant, gave evident signs of future holiness. He left his father’s house to study the liberal arts; in the pursuit of which he passed so blamelessly through the slippery age of youth, as ever to keep before his eyes the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. Of a comely appearance, he was so great a lover of holy purity that he was able to escape snares laid for his chastity by shameless women, and even to repel open attacks. After being made a cleric, he went to Naples to study law, and there took his degree. Meanwhile he was promoted to the priesthood; after which he began to plead, but only in the ecclesiastical court and for private individuals, in accordance with the prescriptions of Canon Law. Once, however, when pleading a cause, a slight untruth escaped him; and happening soon after, in reading the Holy Scripture, to come upon these words: The mouth that belieth killeth the soul, he conceived so great a sorrow and repentance for his fault, that he determined at once to abandon that kind of life. He therefore left the bar, and devoted himself entirely to the divine service and the sacred ministry. As he was eminent in priestly virtues, the Archbishop of Naples confided to him the direction of certain nuns. In discharging this office he incurred the hatred of some evil men, who attempted his life. He escaped their first assault; but soon afterwards one of the assassins gave him three wounds in the face: an injury which he bore unmoved. Desirous of a more perfect life, he humbly begged to be admitted among the Regular Clerks; and on obtaining his request, he asked to be called by the name of Andrew, on account of his ardent love of the Cross.
He earnestly devoted himself to the stricter manner of life he had embraced, and to the practice of the virtues, going so far as to bind himself thereto by two most difficult vows, viz; never to do his own will, and ever to advance in Christian perfection. He had the greatest respect for religious discipline, and zealously promoted it when he was superior. Whatever time remained over after the discharge of his duties and the prescriptions of the rule, he devoted to prayer and the salvation of souls. He was noted for his piety and prudence in hearing Confessions. He frequently visited the towns and villages near Naples, exercising the apostolic ministry with profit to souls. Our Lord was pleased to show by miracles how great was this holy man’s love of his neighbor. As he was once returning home late at night from hearing a sick man’s confession, a violent storm of wind and rain put out the light that was carried before him; but neither he nor his companions were wet by the pouring rain; and moreover a wonderful light shining from his body enabled them to find their way through the darkness. His abstinence and patience were extraordinary, as also his humility and hatred of self. He bore the assassination of his nephew with unruffled tranquility, withheld his family from seeking revenge, and even implored the judges to grant mercy and protection to the murderers.
He propagated the Order of the Regular Clerks in many places, and founded houses for them in Milan and Piacenza. The Cardinals Charles Borromeo and Paul of Arezzo a Regular Clerk, bore him great affection, and availed themselves of his assistance in the discharge of their pastoral office. The Virgin Mother of God he honored with a very special love and worship. He was permitted to converse with the Angels; and affirmed that when saying the Divine Office, he heard them singing with him as if in Choir. At length, after giving heroic examples of virtue, and becoming illustrious for his gift of prophecy, whereby he knew the secrets of hearts, and distant and future events, he was worn out with old age and broken down with labors. As he was at the foot of the Altar about to say Mass, he thrice repeated the words: I will go in to the altar of God, and fell down struck with apoplexy. After being strengthened by the Sacraments of the Church, he peacefully expired in the midst of his brethren. His body was buried at Naples in the church of St. Paul, and is honored even to this day by as great a concourse of people as attended the interment. Finally, as he had been illustrious for miracles both in life and after death, he was solemnly enrolled among the Saints by Pope Clement XI.
How sweet and yet how strong were the ways of Eternal Wisdom in thy regard, O blessed Andrew, when a slight fault into which thou wast surprised became the starting point of thy splendid sanctity! The mouth that belieth, killeth the soul. Seek not death in the error of your life, neither procure ye destruction by the works of your hands. (Wisdom 1:11-12) Thou didst read these words of divine Wisdom and fully understand them. The aim of life then appeared to thee very different, in the light of the vows thou was inspired to make, ever to turn away from thyself and ever to draw nearer to the Sovereign Good. With holy Church in her Collect, we glorify our Lord for having disposed such admirable ascensions in thy heart. This daily progress led thee on from virtue to virtue, till thou dost now behold the God of gods in Sion. Thy heart and thy flesh rejoiced in the living God; thy soul, absorbed in the love of his hallowed courts, fainted at the thought thereof. No wonder it was at the foot of God’s altar that thy life failed thee, and thou didst enter on the passage to his blessed home. With what joy thou wast welcomed into the eternal choirs, by those who had been on earth thy angelic associates in the divine praise!
Be not unmindful of the world’s homage. Deign to respond to the confidence of Naples and Sicily, which commend themselves to thy powerful patronage. Bless the pious family of Regular Clerks Theatines, in union with St. Cajetan thy father and theirs. Obtain for us all a share in the blessings so largely bestowed on thee. May the vain pleasures found in the tabernacles of sinners never seduce us; but may we prefer the humility of God’s house to all worldly pomp. If, like thee, we love truth and mercy, our Lord will give to us, as he gave to thee, grace and glory. Calling to mind the circumstances of thy blessed end, Christians honor thee as a protector against sudden and unprovided death: be our guardian at that last moment; let the innocence of our life, or at least our repentance, prepare for us a happy exit; and may we, like thee, breathe out our last sigh in hope and love.
Rome invites us today to honor with her a group of martyrs, the protectors and the treasure of her great hospital of the Holy Ghost, where they rest under the high altar. The church of St. Augustine, close to the ancient stational church of St. Tryphon, also possesses a portion of the latter’s precious remains.
PRAYER
Grant us we beseech thee, O Lord, to keep the festival of thy holy martyrs, Tryphon, Respicius and Nympha; by whose suffrages may we experience the gifts of thy protection. Through our Lord.
St Andrew Avellino: A Slip Turns into A Conversion
Ss Trypho & Respicius, Martyrs, and Nympha
TRYPHO and RESPICIUS were natives of Bithynia, at or near Apamea and upon the opening of Decius’s persecution, in 250, were seized, loaded with chains, and conducted to Nice, where Aquilinus, governor of Bithynia, and prefect of the East, then resided. After some days’ confinement, they were brought to their trial before him, and upon their confession of their faith, an officer that stood by them, told them that all who refused to offer sacrifice were to be burned alive, and exhorted them to have compassion on themselves. Respicius answered, “We cannot better have compassion on ourselves than by confessing Jesus Christ, the true judge, who will come to call everyone to an account for all their actions.” Aquilinus told them they were old enough to know what they ought to do. “Yes,” said Trypho, “and therefore we desire to attain the perfection of true wisdom by following Jesus Christ.” The judge ordered them to be put on the rack. The martyrs, to express their readiness to suffer, forthwith stripped themselves, and stepped forward with surprising alacrity. They bore the torture near three hours with admirable patience and tranquillity; and only opened their mouths to invoke God, and extol his mercy and power, and to give the judge to understand to what dangers he exposed himself by his blindness. When they were taken down from the rack, Aquilinus, who was going out on a party of hunting, ordered them to be tied to the tails of horses, and led out into the fields, naked and torn and bruised all over as they were, that they might be exposed in that condition to the cold air; for it was winter, and the severity of the frost was so great that they were disabled from walking or standing without exquisite pain, for their feet were cloven by it. After this torment the governor asked them if they did not yet relent; and finding their constancy invincible, ordered them again to prison, threatening them that they should be treated with the utmost rigor. Soon after this, Aquilinus set out to make the tour of some other cities that were under his jurisdiction, and at his return to Nice called for the two prisoners, and promising them great riches and honors if they complied, conjured them to consider their own good before it was too late. The martyrs, who had only God before their eyes, replied, “We cannot better follow your advice, and consider our own good, than by persevering firm in the confession of the name of Jesus Christ.” Aquilinus finding himself defeated in all his attacks in a fit of impotent rage commanded their feet to be pierced with large nails, and the martyrs to be dragged in that condition in the cold weather through the streets. He who is the strength of martyrs, gave them a courage superior to the malice of the enemy. The governor, surprised and confounded at their meek patience, ordered them to be whipped, which was done till the executioners were wearied. This enraged the judge still more, and he commanded their flesh to be torn with hooks, and afterwards lighted torches to be applied to their sides. The saints remaining the same in the midst of these tortments, the governor cried out to the tormentors, bidding them exert their skill in torturing the obstinate wretches in the most exquisite manner. But the saints were invincible, and prayed thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, for whom we fight, suffer not the devil to vanquish us, strengthen and enable us to finish our course. The combat is yours; may the victory be yours.” The next day they were examined a third time, and being as constant as before, were beaten with plummets of lead, and afterwards beheaded, in the year 250. See their authentic, though not original acts in Ruinart, Tillemont, t. 3, &c. Those in Metaphrastes are counterfeit.
With these two martyrs, the Roman Martyrology joins ST. NYMPHA, because her body reposes with theirs at Rome. She was a virgin of Palermo in Sicily, and, in the invasion of the Goths, in the fifth century, fled into Italy, where she served God in great sanctity, and died in peace at Suana in Tuscany. The Greeks honor St. Trypho on the 1st of February, and there stood formerly a church in Constantinople, near that of Sancta Sophia, which bore his name.1 The ancient church of St. Trypho in Rome, being fallen to decay in 1604, it was united to the church of St. Austin, which is now possessed of part of the relics of these three saints. But the principal parts of those of SS. Trypho, Respicius, and Nympha, repose under the high altar in the church of the Holy Ghost in Saxia, belonging to a great hospital in Rome. This street lying between St. Peter’s church and the Tiber, is called Saxia, from a colony of Saxons whom Charlemagne, after he had defeated them in Germany, placed there,2 that they might be instructed in the faith.