Once upon a time, when Digitalnun was even more of a bookworm than today, she decided to read Proust's "Recherche" and Aquinas' "Summa theologica" all through; and having both a modest degree of self-awareness and a respect for the rules of the library, she announced her intention to the monastery librarian. Both agreed she was more likely to stay the course with Proust. Both were wrong. Proust was abandoned long before the madeleine was reached but Aquinas was diligently read to the last sentence. It took two and a half years. He was read early in the morning by the light of a weak bulb; he was read late at night to the accompaniment of gentle snufflings from sleepers in rooms nearby; he was read while hands were numb and nose-tips blue with cold in winter; he was read while heads drooped drowsily in midsummer and the dragonflies danced by the monastery pond. I cannot claim that it made Digitalnun into a scholastic theologian but it did give her a respect both for the task Thomas set himself (a bit like Milton's "to justify the ways of God to men", though expressed with characteristic humility) and for his achievement (he himself would have been the first to acknowledge its incompleteness and imperfection).

I was thinking about Aquinas while reading the pathetic arguments of A. C. Grayling that God cannot exist if he allows tragedies like Haiti. St Thomas would have argued Grayling's case rather better than Grayling himself, I suspect, then demolished it elegantly. "Elegance" is not an obvious word to use in connection with Aquinas but I think it is just. His arguments are always tautly constructed and expressed with an economy of language I find pleasing (but then, I probably have a medieval mind). He would have made a marvellous blogger and a first-class tweeter. He was a man of deep prayer, engaging humilty and endearing humanity (he was rather plump). Above all, he was wise enough to know when to keep silent. In 1273 he laid aside his pen, having been granted an experience in prayer that made him realise that all he had written hitherto was "so much straw" compared with what he now perceived. May St Thomas aid with his prayers those who people the blogosphere and grant wisdom and understanding to us all.